Family Honor

 Prelude: 20 months before Phoenix launch.

 Attending his step-brother's attainment ceremony, where-in a young Ferengi would auction off personal items of strong sentimental value to raise capital for their first business venture, David Rogers bought what he surmised was certificates of graduation and other documents, long since gathering mold in his brother's home. Upon return to star base Lotus, David discovered the bill of sale within the documents, listing a young human female, sold to Orion slave traders, some twenty years ago. Affixed to the document was a few strands of hair and, his curiosity piqued, Rogers had gotten these follicle's tested. The results were conclusive; the DNA matched perfectly with Commander Rogers' own. It was his sister. Long thought dead in the attack on the luxury liner that had claimed his father's life and the rescue of himself by DaiMon Mok. The need for restitution had risen then in David Rogers heart.

Present day.

 Commander Rogers returned his half eaten meal back into the replicator of the class nine shuttle Sagan and went forward to the pilot seat. Having left Earth after enduring a follow up psychological test, David readied himself for the docking at Utopia Planatia, his old stomping grounds. The Sagan, fully repaired at star base Lotus, was being returned to mars, and David had finagled the use of the type 2 shuttle in order to comply with Doctor Nasaro-Myth's recommendation for the follow-up psych test. The alien entity's mind contact with Rogers on the planetoid mission had the Deltan bone crusher concerned. And, David had thought, it was a complete waste of time, but fit into his long term plans. He needed something from Mars, and the opportunity presented by the visit to Earth was not to be passed up. David could finally get his retrieval plan into effect.

He just needed one small tour from an old engineering friend at Utopia Planatia shipyards. The USS Diamond Star awaited inspection.

Prelude: 12 months before Phoenix Launch: Vlugta Asteroid Field, Bajor Sector;

 Rogers’ shore leave was a get-away to the Ferengi home world, a holiday. In actuality, this was a shopping trip.His personal fortune would be the collateral for the clandestine purchase, and delivery, of the last equipment needed to rescue his sister from years of servitude. He knew that official channels would avail home nothing. Star Fleet would in no way, shape or form attempt to rescue one insignificant human/romulan slave girl from Nausican space. The needs of the many mentality was prevalent throughout the Federation worlds, regardless of what popular belief was. Thus, David was resigned to rescue his sister on his own.

 After greasing the palm of the young Talaxian bar tender with a slip of gold pressed latinum, the non-commital youth nodded toward a back table where sat a female Ferengi DaiMon. Walking back toward the secluded table, Rogers casually smoothed his overcoat, making sure the romulan disruptor pistol at his back hip was sufficiently loose in its holster. Grabbing the back of the chair opposite the trader, David spun it about and sat with the seat back in front of him. Eyeing the woman carefully, David dived right into business.

“DaiMon Ishil, I believe you have the item I want on your ship, the Nerrak. Let’s get down to payment shall we?”

 “Commander Rogers! What? No idle chit-chat first? You Hooman’s are well known for your disposition for talk.”

“No time Ishil. I’m not supposed to be out here. What’s your price?”

“Direct to the transaction then, alright. Forty bars.”

 To give the transaction some nobility, David scowled, as expected, and countered defiantly.

“You are breaking me! Twenty-five!”

 A smile crossed the features of the fortyish Ferengi woman as she appreciated the counter offer.

“Your father taught you well Rogers. Thirty seven.”

 Showing a thoughtful face, David mulled over the counter offer and responded in kind. The barter brought back fond memories of his time on DaiMon Moks’ marauder, and the thrill of the trade was exhilarating.

“Thirty two and not a slip more,” he countered.

With a grin that showed her pointed teeth poignantly, Ishil responded in kind.

“Thirty four and I will throw in the power couplings.”

 David had no use for the couplings, but he did not need for the DaiMon to know this.

“Agreed. Beam it directly to the hold of the Sagan.”

 This deal had cost him over half his life savings, but the item was essential to his plan. Once back aboard the shuttle, David verified the Romulan item was in running shape and left the system. He had a date with an old friend to keep on Mars, and he did not want to be late for that meeting.

Prelude: 1 week before Phoenix Launch: Utopia Planitia;

 David met Jason at the expected after work bar in complex B two hours after last shift. The Stem Bolt catered to many of the workers near Utopia Planitia. Having plied his old shift boss with many drinks and retold hi-jinks of their old days working together, the expected subject of shipbuilding inevitably surfaced; as David knew it would. Moreover, knowing Jason’s current assignment, the USS Diamond Star took center stage. Rogers let slip that he had not had the chance to tour the sister ship of the Diamond Star, Lotus Fleet’s own USS Horizon, and the hoped for invitation to tour the Lotus class vessel was extended as hoped for. Security was passed through at McKinley station without incident. A senior engineer with a Star Fleet commander in escort was not that unusual to arouse scrutiny, especially when Jason Shroud was a senior engineer at McKinley. After an extensive walk-through of the ship, David had managed to ‘accidentally’ leave his PADD on the command console on the battle bridge.

Two hours later and forty minutes after Rogers and the Sagan had left Mars orbit, the innocuous looking PADD chirped and interjected the command code override of the ship’s main computer through the command interface of the battle bridge on deck eight. It was no surprise to David that the same codes were still being used for capitol ships here at Mars; they had done so for years here on vessels in dock. Once override was established, a cold start of the warp core was input and the umbilical’s severed.

David had pre-programmed orders in the PADD, which located and beamed out any remaining technician’s remaining on board, while the impulse drive powered up and engaged. Un-manned and under remote guidance, the massive vessel moved out of the hulking arms of McKinley station and gained momentum, leaving a wake of alarms behind her. Three minutes later, the Diamond Star warped out of the Sol system and sped toward the rendezvous point where Rogers already waited.

Wolf 359:

 While awaiting the arrival of his commandeered ship, David replaced one of the anodyne relays with a faulty one and beamed the good one off the shuttle. When the Diamond Star dropped out of warp and coasted to a full stop amid the wreckage of the infamous first Borg encounter at Wolf 359, David carefully engaged the impulse drive and docked in the main shuttle bay on deck four. Quickly making his way to the battle bridge, he finished installing the command override’s on the rest of the ship’s systems and set course for Verex Three, in the Borderlands, at warp nine point five.

After two full days installing and calibrating the Romulan cloaking device he had bought from DaiMon Ishil, the Diamond Star dropped out of warp roughly three AU’s from Verex III and David engaged the cloak. Shimmering dully, the massive starship seemed to fluctuate as the powerful device energized. This newest Romulan technology, first encountered on the Scimitar in 2379 by the USS Enterprise-E under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, produced no tachyon emissions or antiproton traces, thus enabling the Diamond Star to be untraceable to current Alpha and Beta quadrant tracking technologies. From his position on the battle bridge, David engaged the impulse drive and moved forward toward the southern hemisphere of the planet.

At a high orbital vantage point, the Diamond Star floated undetected and Rogers started scanning the large city below. He had re-tuned the ships sensors with a detronal sensor from the medical bay. This genetic scan had been tuned to his own DNA signature, thus enabling David to scan for a Romulan Human life form the same as his own bio signature. It wasn’t long before one entity stood out on the scan, a female subject currently within a three story dwelling along the perimeter of the city. With measured steps, David moved quickly, leaving the battle bridge and arriving to transporter room two near the medical bay. Using the modified scan, David tuned the transporter to the specific signature of Shelly Rogers and energized.  In the med bay, bio bed two, the woman materialized within the predefined stasis field of the medical bed, and a mild sedative applied to keep the subject asleep until David could leave the system.

Thus, the Diamond star cruised stealthily away from the planet and out of the system where, dropping the cloak, David once again engaged the ship’s powerful warp drive and disappeared from the borderlands.

Epsilon Ceti B II, Risa Sector

 USS Diamond Star, Medical Bay

 David stood silently, staring at the inert form of his sister, in stasis within the confines of a medical bed. Her years of servitude within the Orion Syndicate were telling upon her features while her  arms and legs showed signs of breakage and malnutrition. The years had not been kind to her, and Rogers’ fury burned at the thought. His step-father would pay for her sufferage.

 Turning to the nearby console, David  set up the transport co-ordinates and prepared the unit to transport Shelly to the surface of Risa, and more specifically, into the bio bed of a small non-descript hospital within the city of Nuvia, the capitol. Because of the nearby Federation star base twelve, the beam down had to be quick and timely; scan for an empty bed, then transport and raise cloak again. For approximately forty seconds, the commandeered Lotus class vessel would be on Risan and Federation sensors, but David had the timing perfected and the escape course already programmed.

 Arriving at the battle bridge, Rogers sat and started the cloak dropping procedures while simultaneously scanning the city medical centre. A bed was located in obstetrics, and it would do. The massive star ship decloaked above Risa, and the confined transport beam sent his sister down to a better life. As he watched the monitor from the med bay, David wept slightly, that he could not even risk talking with her to tell her who he was and why this had happened to her. It was better that she be a Jane Doe on Risa. Staring at the empty bed David reluctantly tapped an icon and the cloak reengaged. Powerful energies surged through the Diamond Star as her impulse drive threw the ship forward at full impulse and the planet fell away. Barely a few seconds later, her warp drive engaged and the huge ship warped to the next stop on Rogers’ mission: Delivering him back to his fleet and the return of the Federation star ship to her owners at Mars.

The Diamond Star dropped out of warp in a protomatter nebula within the Zeta Leporis system. Having set the programming parameters of the ships next voyage, David left the bridge and minutes later was leaving the ship aboard the Sagan. Once the Diamond Star left, he initiated an overpowered impulse micro-jump, which effectively blew the faulty anodyne relay in the Sagan’s main power coupling systems. Now adrift with only thrusters available, he set course to exit the nebula and proceed toward Lotus base. Most onboard power systems were offline, only minimal life support, thrusters and weak shield’s left.

 The Diamond Star, under programming, warped out of the system and veered above the galactic plane of the ecliptic, leaving the more densely populated area’s behind her. Climbing to warp two, her transwarp drive cut in and the Diamond Star jumped into the particular subspace domain known but to a very few galactic species. Reaching transwarp five, the immense ship left Federation space, and most all other species space, travelling a light year every sixteen seconds.

 The sister ship Horizon, the only other Lotus class vessel built, had travelled from Mars to Lotus base in about twenty-one minutes; Over eighty light years. Thus, within the hour, the Diamond Star was already leaving the Orion arm of the milky way galaxy on her long loop back to Mars. One week later the seemingly miniscule spec of the ship droped out of transwarp at nearly thirty eight thousand light years above the galactic plane and sat, lost in the comparative darkness. Programmed instructions released baryon gas into the entire ship, killing all genetic information on her surfaces and wiping away all traces of humanoid habitation. Once a few hours saturation was complete, the star ship opened herself to the vacuum of space and purged the deadly gas and radiation from within. Then, closed up tightly again, she re-engaged the drives and returned to mars via a longer loop across the top of the galaxy and back into the Orion arm from the relative direction of the Sagittarius arm, falling out of transwarp and then warp to come to a stop above Utopia Planatia about a month after her disappearance. Programming instructions then erased all instructions and flight logs from within her main and sub computer cystems and then shut down main power and set condition blue. Her owners could come reclaim her now.

 Meanwhile, David traversed the masking effects of the protonebula and within six days, had finally reached the periphery that allowed a weak signals to escape. Signalling Lotus Base, David requested assistance, coincidentally reaching the USS Phoenix as she was launching.