Preparations

Oseno nodded to Fleet Captain Samji before taking his seat. It would have been nice to have an ace in the hole like Admiral Donatra, especially since she'd been so helpful to the Enterprise during the Shinzon crisis, but he supposed that the Prophets couldn't give them everything they wanted. As the other officers began asking questions he turned his attention back to his own PADD. The prospect of facing down a Romulan Scimitar was not high on his list of things he wanted to do in his lifetime, but the ship was not impossible to take down and the good news is there would likely only one of them. He wondered about the possibility of Thalaron weapons, and cringed inwardly. If the Romulans decided to make that play there would be little anyone could do to stop them.

On the other hand, Oseno thought, maybe we won't even have to engage them. He knew Commander Rivers, and Captain Kheren of the Artemis would do what they could to try and talk Sela and Tomalok down from their decided course of action, but he also knew that it was likely that diplomacy wouldn't work. His uncle used to say that if a Romulan was giving you a hug it was likely they were looking for a good place to stick a knife.

Oseno's mind was working overtime as he made notes on his PADD, and he had another thought about the Horizon's Children. Someone had said the cult had attacked the Artemis from within with a sleeper agent. He knew that most of the crew of the Alsea had come on after the ship's refit was complete and he suddenly became concerned. Could the fanatics have such an agent on the Alsea? Was there anything he could do to root them out? Could he trust anyone on the ship he didn't know? The natural paranoia of being a security officer was suddenly in overdrive. He needed to rescreen records, conduct security sweeps of the ship, run security drills, run tactical simulations for battling the Romulans...there was suddenly an awfully long list of things to accomplish, and very little time to do it in.