[snip]

“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.

Information on the PADDs was outlined showing a series of small warp bursts recently, in a narrow scope of area in unexplored space. Earlier logs showed auditory records of some kind of a mostly untranslated language for Kord to read and listen through.

Kord arched an eyebrow in a very Vulcan like manner.

“Bolay? That’s not first contact. First contact on that didn’t go well. They want us to try again?” Kord asked, “As for the maintenance records I’ll make sure they’re all up to date so she has an inventory sheet that matches our supplies.”

“No, No… not the Bolay again! We made a dogs dinner of that one, so we can’t afford to fail on this one!” Glen replied. “As for the Engineer, I think you’ll find she’ll be hard to please. She seemed to think that we should have had our refits at the correct times, despite being six months from any Starbase.”

“I really wanted to give more time for R&R but to be organised for this we really ought to have a senior staff meeting,” said Glen. “I’m going to call one twenty-four hours from now. Is that sufficient time for you to read the intelligence on the new species, make a plan for First Contact with them, and to make sure all is up to date with the Merri’s maintenance schedule?”

Looking at the PADDs of information, both Glen and Kord could see there wasnt a 100% certainty they would encounter a species, only clues and echoes of a radio transmission over 10 years old and more recently hints of low key warp bursts barely breaking the barrier. It likely was a new species but they’d need to get out there and follow the bread crumbs to find out more. Information was simply put sketchy at best given the limited things to go on.

“Yes. Twenty four hours should be sufficient.” Kord said rapidly scanning through the PaDDs data.

“Good, then I look forward to your presentation to the senior officers,” said Glen.

-Glen, CO