All together now

Gould walked into the empty room and sat in the chair furthest from the door, pulled out his PADD and waited. He was 5 minuets early but wanted to see in what manner his people came to the meeting, he read his PADD while he slowly drank his coffee.

Josh walked into the conference room, carrying his PADD, and moved towards a chair near the captain. He had just finished the coded command transfer from Mr. Tomah, so he was now officially the chief of security. His teams were busy sweeping the ship and preparing for their upcoming operation, which required many changes in security procedures throughout the entire ship. In order to get all of the departments on the same page for these changes, Josh had prepared a rather large report for the first meeting with his new comrades.

"Hello Captain," he said as he took his seat, "I've had a look at the security procedures from the Artemis that we'll be implementing, and I've gotten my department started on making these changes. There are quite a few things that will affect the other departments, so I'd like to go over them with the department heads before I make the final changes."

"A reasonable concern Lieutenant, I look forward to it." This, he figured, would be a good test of how well they might work together.

Sainthill entered the conference room and took a seat near the head of the table. "Hello Gentlemen" he said as he pulled up the work he had been engrossed in earlier on his PADD. With everything going on it was important that everything was double and triple checked. He had looked forward to this posting, so he had to make sure he brought is "A" game.

Gould looked up from his PADD. "Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. Bindo yet? she had some interesting ideas about how we might approach the AH situation."

Sainthill turned to the Captain."No sir, I have not."

As the human lieutenant entered the room and took his seat, Josh received a message from his assistant with the report from the search of the ship. He was busy reading the report and did not notice the captain's question to the other man.

"Captain," he began, "security teams have covered half of the ship with their search for sabotage. They found two crewmen in a jeffries tube that they weren't scheduled to be in; both men are being held in the brig. I can have the matter investigated further if you like, or we can transfer the prisoners to the starbase so we can get underway on the mission and investigate after we've fixed the anomaly."

"No, conduct the interrogation aboard ship. If they've caused any damage I want to find out first hand as much as we can about.." But was interrupted.

*Captain Gould, priority message from fleet captain Samji coming through sir.*

Gould glanced around the room then stood up. "Come on." he said simply to the others.

As Gould Sainthill and Vincent entered the bridge the main screen was just coming on, showing the fleet captains face,

*To all ships; a situation has arisen. The Artemis and the Alsea are sent out immediately to intercept a Romulan dreadnought on course towards our position. USS Lotus, USS Specter; hasten your preparations. If the Klingon's fancy to do the same, we need to find out real quick and be ready. USS McKenzie; we don't need to have the Horizon Children capitalize on this situation... move out as soon as you can.*

Gould signaled Vincent and Sainthill to go to their posts as he sat down in the captains seat and pushed a button on his arm rest. "Attention all hands, this is your captain. make ready to depart station immediately, all crew to their stations, the ship will be going to red alert as soon as we clear station.. this is NOT a drill. captain out." then turned to look at Vincent. "Anyone still off ship have them beamed directly to a holding area for inspection before their allowed into active duty, I don't want anyone taking advantage of this situation" and then looked at Sainthill "As soon as were clear start scanning for any sign of cloaked vessels, and I don't care how slight the chance it might be, tell me if you see anything out there."

The Helmsman spoke up "Captain, were being hailed by the Specter." Gould nodded "I can guess why, open the channel" He nodded then said "Channel open sir."

Gould stood straight in front of the view screen. "Gould here Specter, we just monitored that last transmission as well and are preparing to exit station at the time, hows your situation captain?"

At the captain's signal, Josh took his station on the bridge. When he heard that a Scimitar was headed towards the starbase, he knew that this day was going to get very interesting. As the captain opened a channel to the Spectre, Josh sent a message to his security teams:

"As per the captain's orders, we will beam all Lotus crewmembers that are on the station directly to holding cells before they are released for duty. Ensign T'Pala, as you are the senior brig officer I need you to search each of them thoroughly, we can't afford to have any saboteurs get onboard now. Chief Parks, leave your investigations team to finish background checks and head to the brig; two crewmen were found making unauthorized visits to secure areas of the ship and I need to know why they were there and if they sabotaged anything. Ensign Kiels, how much longer will you need to finish your sweep of the ship?"

"The sweep will be finished in twenty minutes sir," came her reply.

"That's not good enough," Josh responded. "Take Petty Officer Joken's squad from alpha shift and get it finished in ten."

With orders issued, Josh stood ready for launch. While he awaited the orders to move out, Josh began running through all of the tactical systems and security measures to ensure that his teams would be ready for the Klingons. If they were half as zealous as the Romulans regarding the Horizon, the Lotus's refit would be in for a harsh test of strength.

Sainthill reported to his station and began running diagnostics on the sensors to ensure they were performing optimally when they launched. They could not afford to miss one cloaked ship if any were out there.