====== CO's ready room, USS Qashqai
======
Sitting in the comfortable chair in his ready room, Shane
watched the passing stars – thinking. The Qashqai left
Padassa two hours ago, just after Rangi finished all the
post mortems. Shane left the station and Starfleet forces
nearby in the capable hands of General Sharpe and order the
Qashqai to return to UNITY with high warp. There were sure
tons of issues waiting for the Task Force CO and every hour
spend behind enemy lines offered Starfleet Command stuff for
raised eyebrows.
Shane had to face the fact that as flag officer and Task
Force Commanding officer, he was just too a fine target for
any enemy and especially Romulans and that his "place" was
in his office well guarded on SB 234: UNITY. During the
conversation with General Sharpe, he said that he's the same
valuable target, what was both true and not – a General
Major would indeed be a bounty worth target for the
Romulans, but Shane was in charge of all Special Forces
operations in the current war – since the 2nd Task Force
suffered severe losses and was withdrawn from the front line
and the 3rd Task Force was spread out through the whole
Federation space taking care of non-Romulan business. Shane
was not that valuable as a person, but rather his position
and operational knowledge …
As soon as Rangi finisher her work on Padassa, she submitted
a detailed report about her findings. Shane was interested
in three bodies in particular. That of Samantha Palmer and
Nicolas Harker (both bodies). On behalf of her report, Shane
decided to take all three bodies on board the Qashqai to
deliver them to UNITY's sickbay – where more detailed
analysis could be performed. Rangi needed the specialized
medical equipment on UNITY to come with more detailed
information. But even what she already wrote down was
alarming.
As expected, both bodies of Nicholas Harker were genuine.
None was a clone or 'artifact' or any kind of a copy. Both
were identical … even on sub-DNA level. There was just a
single difference … something connected with temporal side
of DNA … Being no medical doctor, Shane understood only
that fact that one of the two Harker's bodies was not from
this Universe!
Reaching this point in Rangi's report, Shane closed his eyes
and sighed. Another … maybe parallel, universes were
always a nightmare. The MIRROR universe was well known to
all Starfleet senior officers – it was the one where
Terrans were an underground movement against a mighty
Klingon/Bajoran/Cardassian union. Scientists always presumed
that there were many thousands such universes existing …
each representing one possible constellation of possible
events. It was now very well possible that one of those
Harkers came from such an alternate universe.
That alone wouldn't but a great threat to Federation
security. A single man, no matter how determined or evil
could not turn the wheel of galactic power. But … Harker
was cooperating with Tal'shiar and has got great support and
resources from Romulan Intel. Tal'shiar was not exactly
known for generosity, so there must have been something that
Harker traded for their aid. Was it some type of technology?
Or maybe support from that particular alternate universe?
True was that Starfleet Command was troubled about the
sudden rise of power of the Romulans and some of their
allies. No Intel reports indicated such events and it was
one of the major reasons why Federation was caught quite by
surprise with the sudden war. Sure, Tal'shiar was deceiving
SFI for some time now, but still … they could not deceive
ANY major Intel agency in the galaxy … or could they?
====== End of log ======
RAdm. Shane Guzman
CO, 1st TF, SSF Command
CO, SB 234: UNITY