[snip]

Following his meeting with Delaney. Captain Glen returned to the Merrimack Bridge to update Commander Kord on the new mission. Actually, his plan was to hand over the preliminary research to Kord. Just like his crew, Glen needed some R&R too, and his First Officer had all the time in the world, on account of him never sleeping and living practically forever. Who knows, Kord might have even have come across this new species before. In any case, looking through old contact records from that Sector to see if a ship had left some contamination, or cleaning up and then searching through old records of subspace radio transmissions from that Sector, or just formulating their plan for First Contact, all of that was boring administration work, which Glen was not prepared to do and could easily delegate.

Glen exited Space Station K-5, walked through the docking ring and took the turbolift straight to the Bridge. He walked out towards his chair.

“The meeting went well?” Kord asked looking over to Glen.

“All the meetings went as reasonably well as could be expected,” Glen replied. “The Commodore was the usual pen-pushing careerist with no clue. He told me to get some R&R and that he had no ulterior motives for calling us here. Then I got accosted by this she-cat who designed the ship and thinks we aren’t looking after it. Kord, I’d like you to know that hold you personally responsible for missing the Merrimack’s maintenance schedule. I want you to get that service history restored before she gets her claws into me. Apparently, counting all the self-sealing stembolts was far more important than saving the galaxy, and she’s on the team that is currently refitting us, so expect to see her a lot more. After that, I met a Commander who briefed me on our next mission. It is a First Contact mission and we all know how our last one went, so I’m taking my R&R and I’m handing the planning of this one over to you! Here is everything you need to know! Please, we can’t afford to start any Quadrant wide wars this time!” Glen handed Kord a set of data chips.

The Bolay were a race of aquatic humanoids descended from what many scientists in the Federation feel were Preserver transplanted Terran bottlenose dolphins in Earth’s past, to the Bol system on the planet of Bol III. Once there, these early dolphins were exposed unintentionally to a passing rogue asteroid which broke apart in Bol III’s atmosphere. The resulting fallout mutated the race over time into a more dolphinesque humanoid structure similar to what might be called mercreatures from Earth mythology.

First contact with the Bolay was recorded in 2301 by the USS Merrimack while on a routine exploration voyage near the Klingon border in, then, unclaimed space. First contact with a Bolay patrol cruiser soon ended badly with hostile fire exchanged on both sides, ending in the death of 12 Merrimack crew members and an unknown number of Bolay. While it could be claimed that the militaristic Bolay were spoiling for a fight, and that the Merrimack just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the fact that the encounter has resulted in an increasingly hostile new enemy close to the Federation’s own borders does not reflect well on the Merrimack.

-Glen, CO