Closing in

"Captain, were approaching the first drop off point. ETA 5 minuets" the helm officer had an excited tone to his voice.

Gould was walking slowly, somewhat impatiently around the room looking at the other stations. "Understood" and walked back to his seat.

"If I might say so sir, your looking a bit on edge." Tomah had taken the seat to the captains right, looking over the situation reports being sent to him.

"It's too easy, I hate it when it's too easy." and gave out a sigh "I can't help but feel the Romulans pushed us out early, that they.. wanted us to get going with this plan.." Then shook his head. "But that's just not possible is it? perhaps I spent to many years seeing Romulans in the shadows but it's something they would do."

Sainthill continued monitoring the sensors with great diligence "Still nothing on long range sir, but that's no guarantee no ones out there of course. Even with the upgraded systems there's quite a bit of interference from the Azimuth Horizon."

"Thank you lieutenant, stay on it, when we come out of warp I'd like a short range sweep of the area."

"Aye sir." and went back to his work.

Tomah got up and walked over to Vincent. "I'll be to busy to hold your hand much shortly.." he said with a smile "Anything more you need to know?

"Yes sir," Josh replied. "I had a brief chance to glance over some of the upgrades made during the Lotus's retrofit, but I was wondering if there are any upgrades that I should pay special attention to; anything that I'll need to know in-depth to make it through Operation Horizon?"

Tomah gave it a quick thought "Unless we have'ta go into the the thing I don't think so, they pretty much just upgraded the new systems to include the AH effects, but for the most part you can't tell the differnce"

The Helm officer intreupted "Coming up to drop off point, 30 seconds.."

Gould was till thinking What were the Romulins after? I'm was fairly sure it's was ruse to draw us out, but then.. nothing. He looked out the view screen at the stars streaking by. And what about the timeing? could that have just been a coenidence? He frowned at the idea. What if..

"Coming out of warp now sir, The Spectre is matching us" Tomah informed him.

The two ships dropped out of warp close to each other with precision timing, the area was empty with the Azimuth Horizon burning across their view screen like a misshapen wall of fire.

Sainthill spoke up "No sign's of trouble captain, shall I signal the Spectre to precede to it's target point?"

Gould sat looking at the screen for a few seconds longer. "No" and stood up, walking a few steps closer to the screen. Many of the bridge crew glanced at each other. He then looked at Sainthill "Lieutenant, perform tachyon sweep of the area, tell me what you find"

"Captain" Sainthill added "If your intent is to uncover any cloaked vessiles it would take several days to check the local area with any efficiency"

"True enough Lieutenant, but I'm not looking for ships exactly, But.. they don't know that, do they?" Gould knew that if he was wrong about this, If there were no ships waiting for them here, he would come off looking vary paranoid in front of his crew. "Mr. Vincent, signal the Spectre to go to red alert on my mark and change their position to our rear guard."

Seconds clicked slowly by as Sainthill continued to scan and Vincent relayed Gould's request.

"Aye sir," Josh replied as he sent the captain's orders to the Spectre. Once he'd sent the request, he sent a message to his number two, Ensign Kiels, telling her to prepare for combat and boarding parties. As he completed his message, the sensor readout in front of him caught his eye.

"Sir, I'm detecting some unusual particle displacement at the edge of the anomaly," Josh reported. "The dispersal pattern suggests that these may be warp trails that have been distorted by the anomaly. If that is the case, there were at least three vessels here recently."

The sensors of the Lotus continued to sweep the area designated by Samji as Quadrant Three. There were at least two other cloaked ships in the vicinity stalking their prey and continuing to fly in a pattern to avoid detection. The Captains of these ships wondered when their leader would give the signal. They were sick of the dishonorable cat-and-mouse game he played. They were not idiots, though. They knew if they defied his order, they would pay for it, and dying for disobeying orders would send them straight to the Barge of the Dead.

So they waited and continued their game, but one was not so adept at it than the others and got too close to the Lotus. Any Klingon officer knew the safe proximity while under cloak, but their Captain led them within the area where certain spatial effects would be detectable to a very proficient science officer. The Tactical officer said as much to his Captain and received a swift uppercut to his jaw, knocking him flat on his back, for the trouble. Regardless he ordered flight ops to back off and waited some more for their leader to give the word.

"Captain!" Sainthill exclaimed excitedly. "Were detecting multiple explosions aboard the Spectre.. main hanger!"

As if expecting something like this Gould immediately shouted out "Red Alert"

Tomah hailed sickbay "Dr. Bindo, stand by to receive possible casualties from the Spectre" over the Com Bindo's voice came back *What happened? did we.." But Gould cut her off. "You'll be informed as the situation dictates Doctor, bridge out" He couldn't have her tying up the line, he didn't like the timing of all this.

Sainthill spoke up "Sir should I try to hail the Spectre?" But Gould shook his head. "Unless you think their Com might be down no, they'll call us if they need us, you stay on.."

But Sainthill's panel chimed at that moment distracting him."Captain, tachyon sweep is detecting a possible ship, bearing.. sir, its just off our port aft."

"Helm! bring us about!" and quickly returned to his seat. "Get our nose pointed at that signal and the rest of us between it and the Spectre, they may need time to to recover." Any second now he expected a Romulan war ship to decloak in front of them, and if they didn't he'd make them with a low yield photon barrage. But what did it mean? how did they sabatage the Spectre? were they somehow working with the children? He wanted some answers, and he was dam sure planiing to get them.

“Shields are up, weapons are charged and targeted on the location of that signal,” Josh reported as the ship swung around towards the contact. “Security teams are arming and will be in position shortly.”

Josh paused for a moment as he read a message from Ensign Kiels. “Sir, per new security procedures call for senior bridge officers to be armed with Type II phaser pistols; I had not transferred the required pistols to the bridge storage compartment yet, so my assistant is bringing them now.”

“How did I forget that?” he thought, "it is a good thing that Nidiri is here to back me up.”