The Tourism Trade

Posted on Sat Jan 31st, 2026 @ 6:38pm by Ensign Noah Balsam & Lieutenant Irynya

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Pathfinder Station - Station Operations
Timeline: Mission Day 20 at 1030

[Pathfinder Station - Station Operations]
[MD 20, 1030 Hours]

The shuffle of feet on deck plating was, surprisingly, quiet. Not that there was no sound. It was impossible to mask the sound of 17 people exiting the large lift and filing along the side of Pathfinder Station's operational center. They had been asked, before they entered the lift, to please minimize conversation and stay to the outer edge of ops. Their guide, a tall Barzan man whose breather apparatus seemed more an augment to his facial features rather than an assistive device, had promised that he would give them opportunities to ask questions, but was equally adamant that they not disturb the work of the skeleton crew on duty.

Like a starship's bridge, Pathfinder's Station Operations bustled with smartly coordinated activity. Even with less than its full complement the ops center practically sang with movement. Along with the movement was the murmured sounds of voices going about their morning despite the intrusion of a group of tourists.

Iry's eyes scanned the room once she had settled, arm brushing against Noah's on one side and a wiry Bajoran woman on the other, while she tried to pinpoint where the station's flight controls were. Stations could be tethered to a planet's orbital pull, but Pathfinder required maneuvering thrusters--hundreds of small multidirectional mechanisms both to keep it in place and to adjust when the wormhole opened and closed.

Almost absentmindedly, she slid her hand into her friend's, winding he fingers between his and squeezing before darting a look to the side. Watching Noah take in the technology of Pathfinder Station had been, in some ways, more fun than the tour itself. "Think they'd let me drive the station?" she whispered, cocking her head toward him so that the joke would stay between them.

Broken from the quiet review of his thoughts, Noah looked at the sudden touch. In truth he'd heard very little said, his thoughts consumed by mail and a need to... create. Something. Errant chords were going through his thoughts, like flecks of music not yet cohesive. He was finding the pattern and the way, but it had thus far eluded him. Such things took solitude and he did not have it.

"Pathfinder is the realization of a dream from as early as fifty years ago when our scientists detected graviton anomalies and verteron particles on the Alpha Quadrant side. The dream had..."

Noah caught the Barzan as he spoke when Irynya touched and took his hand. His gaze lifted to hers and he gave a smile to her direction. "... In the Delta Quadrant, the anomaly has long been known as the Gate of Navo. We know today that the wormhole has probably existed for a few thousand years. There is evidence that..."

"It's a lot bigger than the Sojourner's Bridge..." Noah murmured to Irynya, scanning the 360 degree window banks that they were walking, with the control pit a half-deck lower. It was state of the art: standing transparent consoles and holo-projections formed the outer ring. There did not seem to be a command console or a place where command-level officers sat. In truth Noah had been consumed enough that he felt like a kid who'd been doodling in school and he'd missed the lesson. If the guide had told them where the control stations were, he'd missed it.

Music intruded for a moment, a bit of a repeating fascination on a tired brain. "Did they say where anything is yet?"

Iry shook her head, unphased that he hadn't answered--she suspected hadn't even heard--her joking question. "Not yet, no," she said, peering down into the bowl of the space. "That," she gestured gently with their soft hands, curling her wrist ever so slightly to indicate direction, "might be flight control. At least from here that's a reasonable guess. It's centered and positioned to take advantage of the windows and the view screen.

"Sorry... did... I miss something?" Noah asked. His eyes followed her gesture and he tilted his head. He lean closer, "How can you tell?" His eyes lifted. "I-I mean... besides the red uniform?" He smiled in to a cheek. "We need to create a diversion..." He joked. Surely he was joking.

Noah had been correct. It was significantly larger than the Sojourner's Bridge. Larger than the Adelphi's had been as well. Below them a few individuals left their stations to congregate around another, peering together at whatever output had drawn their attention. At the same time a set of doors on the other side of the operation center opened revealing a tall creature encased in some kind of environmental control suit. The individual entered the space, descending onto the floor of the the lower level and, to Irynya's eyes, scuttled over to the group.

Iry's eyes widened followed by an excited glance at Noah. "Is that..." she started, trying to speak quietly despite her enthusiasm, "a Tholian?"

Noah's eyes were already following them. The being had a... an encounter suit of some kind? It looked like a crystalline lattice that sent odd shards of light across the floor. And the ceiling. Something about it made the eye just slide off the whole structure. Like it was... almost... unnatural to the Human gaze. Noah had never seen such a being. Tholians were... even today... not well understood.

This one scuttled. Its walk was almost decapodian- it had thin crystalline limbs- six seemed to form legs, and two seemed like mantis-like limbs tucked close to its gem-like chest. Again Noah felt his gaze almost shift away. "I've-I've never seen one. I think so. It looks like... a-an Operator drone?" The highly specialized Tholians, deceptively hive-like, created their kind based on need. More like a Xindi Insectoid or a Jarada. Or a bee. A giant crystal shaped bee. "Usually the Supervisors don't have the legs... I think..." His nose wrinkled. "We'd have to ask someone in Science."

As the creature scuttled, it changed its angle that, for just a moment, it was almost like light bent and lensed around it, forcing Noah to again shift his gaze away with a note of discomfort.

"I thought I saw one... or something like this... from a distance when the department heads went to the Orcadian Gem. But..." It was taking all of Iry's self control not to gape outright. "That one was moving quickly away from me and I only caught a glimpse."

Like Noah, she too noticed the way the large insectoid-like... she was having trouble attaching the descriptor 'person' to them... individual wore a suit that seemed to deflect anyone looking at it. The whole thing was synthetic and while it looked as if it was solid, she briefly wondered if Tholian silk played some sort of role in its construction. Whatever it was made of was foreign enough that she was having trouble drawing a corollary materials she had encountered herself.

"I-I wish I had a tricorder right now," Noah mumbled to her.

If she and Noah were distracted by the Tholian's appearance, the Pathfinder crew below seemed barely to react. Instead the individual whose console they were clustered around inclined their head in welcome and then proceeded to gesture at the display, speaking in rapid spurts and pausing to listen to what must have been the method the Tholian was using for communication. Half a minute later the Tholian turned and exited the same way they had entered, the other ops crew members dispersing as well back to their own consoles.

Noah did his best to watch it go. How... did it do that? A personal cloak? A light refraction aspect of their crystal? Partial telepathy? Some sort of personal phasing field? Was it for communication? Or was it just a single aspect of what made Tholian's profoundly and inescapably weird to Human eyes? And that was when Noah broke ranks.

His thin lankiness carried him away from the group, his eyes furtive that the Barzan didn't immediately notice. Did Noah Hyman Balsam III have... a bad side? A devious quality? He approached where the Tholian had been speaking to an officer. "Hi. I-I was just wondering. Was that a Tholian? A Tholian Operator?"

The Bolian female was at first more taken aback of being addressed by a member of the public than she had the Tholian. He made a Bolian sound, much like the Human uh pause. It sounded like an "Ium..." to Noah. "Yes, that is a Tholian." She gestured two fingers, "One of their operating caste. Sir you need to return to your tour immediately or I will need to call security."

Noah's eyes rounded as he felt a hand wrap his small bicep. "Tour is this way, son. Please stay with the group or we will need to detain you. We are running sensitive calibrations of our scanners right now." Noah looked to his side to see the owner of the hand that so easily encapsulated his bicep. Grazerites were generally known as an amiable people who went with the herd, so to speak. So to see one staring at him, sternly, while gesturing at the group with his clefted hand was... an experience.

Noah went willingly and was deposited back in the middle of the tour where he could, likely, be more carefully monitored. As he passed he heard...

"... They're down another six percent. We're still within known data but... we're creeping toward the lower end of the bell curve."

"... Do we need to inform..."

Noah sifted back to Irynya as he could.

Irynya watched her friend's progress back through the tour group with barely contained surprise. When he was close enough for her to make eye contact she mouthed an over exaggerated Oh My Stars at him with heavy emphasis on the last word, repeating it twice until he was next to her again. "Did you just..." she started, then stopped, snagging his arm and tugging him toward an alcove between two stations that, for the moment, appeared unoccupied. They'd been near the back of the group to begin with so it wasn't hard to fall to the very end. "Did you just walk down onto the floor of Pathfinder's Station Operations as if you owned the place?" she asked in a voice that was clearly warring between amazement and the obvious need to keep it down.

"That was..." she caught herself before she offered the first word that came to her mind, tempering it down to, "...badass."

Noah's rictus of a grimace and flushed face told all as he sort of quivered a shrug. "I-I had to know... it was... crazy and stupid. But mostly stup-" Noah's ears trained in on a sound. It was universally Starfleet in nature. Something had just crossed a threshold. Noah stooped and leaned close. "I think something weird's going on... they just said something is off-"

He'd no sooner spoken than with a jarring abruptness the lights dimmed and the few skeleton crew consoles shifted from the dour grays and oranges to brighter and pulsing with yellow alert bezels. "Ma'am, I have an energy wave bearing 079 mark 113. Distance. 318,000 kilometers." An officer in yellow stated. "Admiral to Operations. All hands go to Yellow Alert."

The murmur of concern from the tour group was like palpable ice, frozen, uncertain.

"Get them out of Ops," a voice from down in the pit called up to the Barzan who had been leading the tour in a tone that brooked no argument.

Their guide, at the front of the line for which Iry and Noah were now the lingering rear, startled into motion. "Right, off course," the man sputtered, casting his eyes on the group as if doing some swift mental calculus. "Everyone this way please," he called. The security officers quickly shuffled in, intent on herding this unstable element out of the way. From the pit someone called, "Too late, brace! Impact in eight seconds!"

The group had only just stuttered into moment when several things happened at once.

With a speed that suggested the bezels of yellow alert had been easily too little, too late, the deck plating beneath their feet bucked. The tour group had been halfway between lifts when they started moving and now several found themselves on the floor--two having tumbled from the upper ring the full half deck down the gangs into the bowl of the main control area of the pit.

By pure chance, the alcove Iry had pulled the two of them into gave them both something to hold onto beside each other. Iry's free hand, flew, scrabbling for purchase on the console next to her as the bucking of the deck threw them together. Her back met a solid surface and a millisecond later, Noah stumbled into her. They were, however, still on their feet.

"What was..." Iry started, scrambling to untangle herself from Noah and making for the rail that lined the edge of the pit. The officers down below them had fared far worse than they had. Several were on the floor, a few apparently unconscious from knocking their heads against their posts, each other, or the floor.

Noah eyed one crumpled on the center holographic table area, their eyes fluttering as white blood trickled from a head wound.

The brilliant ominous red of the red alert bezels had already replaced the yellow and a klaxon sounded along with the cool voice of a computer delivering an alert. "Red Alert! All stations! Beta wave inbound in twenty seconds." Worse, there was a strange... feeling. A listing. A spin or an angle, like the station was off-kilter. Gravity control? Inertial dampeners?

Something like dread crept up Irynya's spine. The feeling beneath her feet--as if the gravimetrics were fighting against something else--was familiar.

Screams of scared civilians was a cacophony as one in the Station Operations area shouted, "Emergency Medical Response Teams to Ops!" Another shouted.

Noah looked at Irynya and he seemed to make a grim decision on impulse. Noah normally would have stayed out of the way. What had... happened to him? "Dammit," he uttered with a squint of his eyes. Protect. The look on his face was the same look he'd been going around Subrek's ship in. He was scared. But something was in there. Trauma, or something borne of it. Noah moved. He had to lean in to his weight to get down the gang into the pit where a few officers were trying to pull themselves up.

Irynya picked up on Noah's plan barely a moment before he was moving and followed a half a step behind, almost sliding down the gangway to keep from losing track of him in the hubbub.

"Damage Report! Get the shields up!" Someone shouted. Noah clocked her as a woman in yellow. Noah's eyes started searching for the Engineering console. He was near it. It was the central console. Of course it was. If even temporarily, that was the focus of Pathfinder Station. Get online. The table would no doubt be repurposed later. Noah approached the table near the fallen Acamarian.

"Hey! You can't be down here! Security!" Someone called. Noah's fingers were already in motion. He did something he'd seen once in a movie. This sort of lone wolf character in a snowy base raised a raise to say, "one minute."

"Lieutenant, three o'clock from your puh-position!" He tilted his head, "Or... three-thirty. I think that's CONN?" He pointed for Irynya to go. He looked at his friend and the empty console that had probably been making automated adjustments to station keeping for ages. No one was managing it.

Her only response was a terse nod of understanding and then she was off, dashing for the CONN.

"We-we're from the Sojourner." He addressed the woman calling for his removal, eyes checking her rank and he wanted to wince. he'd just given a one minute finger to a Lieutenant Commander. "Sorry... um..." He fished in to his pocket and slapped his commbadge on to his t-shirt.

The Lieutenant Commander hesitated a moment. With gritted teeth, she nodded curtly once. "Lieutenant Commander Sylvia Deetz, Chief Logistics Officer. I need a status report." She called. "Names?" She added.

Holding her commbadge up for just a moment so that the woman barking commands could see, Irynya answered first. "Irynya, Lieutenant, Helm Chief," she focused in on the console in front of her, swiping alerts and status screens out of her way until she could see the automated controls. The station's thrusters, used to keep it in orbit around the mouth of the Barzan Wormhole offered a far more complex piloting challenge than the day to do management of a starship. They were used less for movement and more for stabilization, the way you might use thrust to put you back into your place rather than propel yourself forward.

"Aft thrusters show damage in Blue, White, and Green sectors," she called out. "Fore thrusters operational, but we're listing toward the aft ring. Adjusting fore thrusters to compensate."

"Balsam, Noah, Ensign, Systems Specialist." Noah said. "Damage coming in. Minor damage to all aft sectors. Hull b-breeches... are contained. Emergency bulkheads in place. It-it looks like some of the scaffolding in Green sector has broken off..." The hologram pivoted and flashed where in real time, something seemed to be separating from the hull. "Shit, I don't know this configuration... but..." Noah began but he shook his head a moment later. He would adapt.

"Shields are up!" Someone called near Irynya. "But we're drifting. Beta verteron wave, impact in eight seconds. We are being pushed away from the wormhole!"

"Shit," the Risian muttered. Her eyes swept the readouts in front of her, calculating and discarding solutions faster than they could fully register. "Find something to hold onto," she yelled in response and with a rapid dancing of long tan fingers, she turned the thrusters from the task of addressing the station's growing tilt to the task of actually moving forward. "Hard to port!" She called.

Around them there was a loud groaning sound as the entire bulk of Pathfinder Station turned shifting from a position where it's broad width faced mostly into the incoming wave to one where the station lined up nearly perpendicular. The wave itself hit part way through the maneuver wrenching them and making Irynya's stomach clench through the wave of confused gravitational forces. Her hands, though, remained at the controls, coaxing the fore thrusters--now positioned at the rear of the station relative to the wave--to push them toward, rather than away from the phenomenon.

Noah grabbed the console as the world shimmied like someone was putting them through something that sifted big rocks from little ones. The hologram in front of Noah again lit up in red, indicators, flashing sections. The spinning station schematic showed in real time, with a sparkling particle wave, as whatever was hitting them, impacted. It felt like minutes. Time stretched that way, whether it was the sheer focus on the moment or some kind of time-space effect.

It gradually lessened... lessened. The sickening vibrations of the deckplates went from groan, to murmur, to whimper. "Damage report."

"Admiral, in Operations." Someone called. Near Irynya, an older looking Benzite, skin the color of slate stone with cerulean pigments strode out of a turbolift with a mild head contusion. Their small, dark eyes surveyed the scene as, from a traditional chest-mounted rebreather, a ghostly cocktail of vapor issued. They breathed from it almost like a goldfish nipping out flakes from a goldfish bowl floor.

"Hull is bearing stress... m-mostly along the aft-side areas not finished. Force fields are in place and holding except in... Green 44, 47, 49,.." Noah began. "But I think bulkh-" He squinted at the data and was cut off.

"Get these civilians off my Command Deck, Commander Deetz." The Benzite Admiral said with a calm, seething indigence,, the voice surprising gruff.. "No more tours until I give the word. And give me a status report. What happened?" They gestured with their webbed hand, their double thumbs spread in some sort of Benzite emphasis.

Several officers- a notable Human in red and another, a Tulian in yellow- moved and interposed themselves between the controls and Noah and Irynya. The Tulian eyed Noah's commbadge, the array of small scintillating black implants along their face catching the red flashes of alert. "You're relieved." They stated neutrally, yet the gesture said everything. It was a taxi cab gesture away. As in move it. "I'll take over." The person had two pips- a silver and a black. Noah nodded hesitantly, pushing off the console.

The Human woman in red with two silver pips on her collar approached Irynya. "Excuse me, this is my station..."

For a moment Iry stood her ground. The woman in front of ber didn't outrank her and hadn't been the one who kept the entire station from being sent tumbling away from the wormhole's aperture location. "Your aft thrusters aren't functioning at full capacity. I've set the fore thrusters to compensate, but you'll need to move the station back into synchronous orbit. I haven't done that yet."

"Thanks Lieutenant," the woman said with something like genuine appreciation in her voice. "I'm on it." The Admiral's eyes, meanwhile, studied Irynya with the cold haughtiness of a dissertation proctor, their arms behind their back. They breathed in again toward their chest with a fresh puff of vapor.

All but shaking with the continued surge of adrenaline Iry stepped away from the CONN moving to Noah's side and then stopping, not quite willing to leave without some idea of what she'd just navigated through. If they were about to be chewed out by an Admiral who thought they were civilians she wanted to take the brunt of it.

Noah's face was flushed and he seemed agitated but it wasn't clear why. Two security officers approached and flanked the Sojourners. One took Noah by the arm in a repeat of earlier and when Noah blinked to see who had, he found it was a wholly different officer. Noah turned back, almost apologetic, to look at Irynya. This whole Ops tour had been his idea.

"A moment Admiral Mentarrim, if I may." Deetz stated. She adjusted an errant lock of hair that had come free of her bun in the chaos. "They claim they're from the Sojourner. They were trying to help..." The Admiral's gaze bore down first on Deetz and then Irynya and finally on Balsam. "We should at least acknowledge that."

The Benzite straightened their back and swayed at the waist to stiffly look about Ops. The frightened civilian tour was only now boarding a turbolift. And from another, several personnel in blue were briskly joining the scene. They turned back, and breathed anew. Something in the vaporous soup seemed to... sparkle? "Noted. You will have security follow up with their counterpart on the Sojourner." The Admiral noted coolly as they studied the two. "And check their records. In the meantime..." The Admiral nodded at their security detail and then seemed to simple dismiss their presence by walking away. "Status." With gentle but assertive pressure, the guard that had Noah's arm bade him to move.

"This way." The Benzite security officer near Irynya indicated, a waft of fresh briny scent seemed to follow their words and gesture.

Iry glanced at the man and then over to Noah's officer. "We're not dangerous," she murmured darkly in the other man's direction, eyes falling to where he was holding onto Noah's upper arm. "We don't need help walking." She glared at the man a moment longer and then met Noah's gaze with something like apology for potentially making things worse. Then she turned and strode in the direction that had been indicated moving quickly enough that the Benzite would have to hurry to catch her if he meant to man handle her as well.

Escorted in to a turbolift, Noah and Irynya could see the Admiral approach a quietly indignant Deetz. The doors closed. "Main Promenade." The Benzite officer said.

---

"A moment..." Admiral Mentarrim stated with a waving, swim-like gesture of their fingers at Deetz. "No more tours until this situation is stabilized. We have a schedule to maintain and I will not allow this to delay it. We have a convoy in eight days. See to it there are no interruptions, Deetz."

"Yes Admiral." Deetz replied. The Admiral breathed their smoky inhaler and began to move away, then stopped.

"Sojourner. I believe that is Kodak's ship. Get him on a secure com in my ready room. If those are his officers, I want them immediately placed under a gag order. They are not to discuss this event. If they do. Throw them in the Brig. Nothing is going to delay our timeline, or the convoy from the Alpha Quadrant." They again made that swimming-like undulation with their fingers. Then their hands went behind the back. In the background, a status report was spoken to them.

---

The turbolift was painfully quiet, interspersed with the sound of the Benzite officer's breathing apparatus. Irynya felt as if she might vibrate out of her skin if someone didn't say something soon.

The silence stretched taut and finally the lift stopped. One of the officers entered something into a wall console and the doors remained shut.

That single act broke Iry's poise. "Respectfully, sirs, Mr. Balsam and I are both Starfleet officers. Kindly explain why we're being held here or unlock the doors so we can be on our way."

The Benzite eyed the Risian and then twisted to do the same with Noah. He harrumphed dismissively, a tone that was oddly mitigated by the breathing apparatus. "Consider everything you saw and touched up there to be highly classified." This was delivered pointedly, a warning coating the edges of his tone. "Well above your access levels," he added, eyes narrowing at each in turn. "As far as anyone is concerned when you step out of this lift you saw nothing, touched nothing... You know nothing."

Iry squirmed, fingers curling into her palm where she pressed her nails to the meat of her thumb to keep from saying something stupid.

"Is that understood?" the officer snipped. He waited and when there wasn't an immediate answer he repeated himself. "Is that understood?"

"Understood," Iry growled back and turned away facing the door without bothering to be dismissed. "Can we go now?"

"Yessir." Noah said more softly. He had seemingly retreated back in to himself as the events moved and spun out of control and then took a very... authoritarian... turn. Noah's eidetic brain had almost burned the face of the Benzite in to his mind. And he looked up at this Benzite as well. His eyes fixed on their rank.

The doors of the turbolift opened. The Benzite gestured out of the door in what was, again, almost like a taxi cab hail. "Yes. Dismissed."

Noah stepped out quietly, chewing at the inside of his cheek. His hand slid up and down where the officer had held him. He felt hot and prickly, the hairs on his nape on end and hyper-aware. Part of it was the adrenaline kick of whatever the hell had just happened.

Iry stalked out of the turbolift behind him, stopping shy of the lift and turning to stare back at the officers within. Their impassive gaze met hers until the doors closed.

Noah said nothing until the doors of the turbolift closed. "Iry." He chewed his cheek again. "Wha-whatever that was, I think it came from the space near the wormhole. About uh... 2,000 kilometers away from where its supposed to happen. I'd guess." He shook his head. "I'm not sure... just... I didn't get to see much."

With the security officers gone Irynya's stance softened. She had to resist a sudden impulse to pull Noah into a fiercely protective hug knowing full well it was neither the time nor place. She settled instead for placing her hand over his where it ran up and down his bicep. "Yeah," she agreed. "That matches what I saw on the navigational sensors. We're lucky we didn't lose more thrusters than that. I'm not sure we could have turned in time with less." With a gentle squeeze of her hand she dropped her arm and paced a few steps forward, turning and coming right back. "I know we're on shoreleave," she said. Her brows knit, eyes dark with conflict. "But Captain Kodak should know what we know. Even if what we know isn't... you know... isn't anything at all."

The thought made her stomach turn, a ghost of the clenching gravitational shifts following in the feeling's wake. "I'm not..." she frowned again, "I don't want to go back yet, though." She said. "I mean... like... check out of our room and end shoreleave early back."

Noah tilted a thoughtful head at that possibility, a lilt of pause. But no. He didn't either. "But... that felt weird right? It-it wasn't just me? Or was it just me?" He shrugged with a knit at his brow over his hooked nose. "I'm a little stuck. I'm... well..." He rolled a hand as a sort of proxy shrug. "Lower decks. I think they just told me to stay quiet. I mean. I-I don't want to defy the orders of station security but..." His chuckle sound exasperated. "What the hell was that?" His eyes narrowed. "And I see words, Iry. That officer said we are supposed to... I took it as ordered us to... we saw nothing, touched nothing, we know nothing."

"It wasn't just you," Iry confirmed. "That was a gag order." She frowned then, considering. They were all taught the basics of the chain of command, but there were exceptions. When innocents were endangered. When you were being ordered to violate the Prime Directive. But neither of those was, expressly, true here. Still, she had the niggling feeling that keeping silent was the wrong decision.

Noah was thinking through the fresh, albeit less fresh, drills from Academy that had lashed him with what was and was not appropriate for an officer- particularly an Ensign and the bottom rung. Trust your superiors. Be vigilant. Weirdly, at that moment, it seemed contradictory.

"I think we need to report in," she finally said. The Admiral told Deetz to confirm we were who we say we are. At a minimum they're going to contact the Sojo. I'd rather be present to account for the requested confirmation. Not going... feels like we're trying to hide something. And we didn't do anything wrong. We stepped in to help. We kept the station from being pushed out of orbit. That didn't just affect us, it affected every docked ship." If it was possible the crease in her forehead between her brows furrowed deeper. "You don't have to go report, though. I mean... like you said... lower decks. That works for you right now. I'm the ranking officer. I'm the one they're going to expect to take any responsibility or... you know... blame." She frowned. "Not that there's anything to be blamed for."

Noah's mouth formed its puzzling knot of tense, puckered lips. "Uhhh... I-I guess I respect the chain of command... but... report what I know? And try to avoid the parts that they want to..." He trailed off, eyes narrowed and shook his head, "See I-I start to say that and it just doesn't sound right. I'm not... I'm not an astrophysicist like..." His eyes rounded, he gestured, "Uh, at-at all. But..." His nose wrinkled in frustration. "Ok... after all that thinking out loud... I'll um... I'll follow your lead."

Iry nodded, eyes on her friend as he spoke. "My lead," she agreed, "but also... your conscience, ok? You should trust your gut too. I know I do."

She sighed and twisted, looking around them as if she needed to ground herself in their location. "Ready?" she asked, finally, looking for Noah to the route they needed to take and back again.

Noah nodded once, albeit a bit with conflicted grimness.

A Post By:

Lieutenant Irynya
Chief Helmswoman

Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist

With

Admiral Mentarrim
Sector Command, Pathfinder Station

Lieutenant Commander Sylvia Deetz
Chief Yard Logistics Officer