57: Everybody's a Comedian

Everybody's a Comedian
by Lt. CDR Dabin Reece
71230.12
Hours Before "The Third Degree"

--=Starfleet Command: San Francisco, California, Earth=--


"Dabin Reece! How the hell are you!" Admiral Vox popped out of his seat and grabbed the Trill's hand, shaking it vigorously.

"Well I'm fine Admiral, thanks for asking."

"Dude, you want something to drink?" Admiral Vox went to the replicator. "Two club sodas with lime."

The replicator hummed and produced two bubbling glasses. He handed one to Reece and took the other for himself. "Computer says you love these."

"I sure do! Thanks you Admiral."

"Please, call me Jonas. Ranks are for stiffly stiffersons."

"Sounds like a plan to me. So what info can I offer you today Jonas?"

"Oh yeah." Vox frowned and set his drink down, and picked up his Dabin Reece PADD. "They make me ask all these dumb questions. Debriefings are such a waste of time."

"We could just blow it off and play video games." Reece joked, punctuating his suggestion with a chuckle.

Vox pondered his PADD a moment more, then threw it back over his shoulder onto the floor. "You've had a great career and no one has anything bad to say about you. So you know what? Screw the PADD. Let's play video games."

"Seriously?" Dabin asked, having not expected that kind of reaction.

"Damn right. I've got a version of Shuttle Racer on this computer you can't get anywhere for another year. I pulled some strings with the programmer." Vox pulled open a drawer and flipped a controller to Reece.

"Wait! Just one second there before we start doing laps around Saturn. My next posting, I was a kind of wondering..."

"Relax dude! I've taken care of all of it. You'll be assigned to the Serendipity. You and all your buddies are going to be there. Liisy and the Vedek, Pointy and Kellyn, TC, that crazy French chick, yeah even little Arie. The whole gang. There's a PADD over there with all the details of the mission but who gives a damn right now. I want to race!"

"Well that's great but.... who will helm this ship?"

Vox leaned across his desk, looking genuinely hurt. "Dabin, baby, I took care of you. How can you call a ship Serendipity and not have it guided by Grace?"

Dabin grinned. "Then I guess the only thing left is for me to blow your nacelles off."

Vox started the game, and the two laughed as they zipped their shuttles through the asteroid belt. Dabin nipped at Jonas' heels but figured letting the Admiral win was probably the better part of valor, so he took care not to pass him. As they approached the edge of the belt and the finish line however, the power in the office suddenly winked out.

"No, I had you!" The Admiral protested.

"Yeah you had me. Good game anyway."

Vox tapped his com badge. "Vox to security, what happened to the power in my office?"

[[Not sure yet Admiral. We lost all power on your level only. They rest of the complex is running fine.]]

"Dabin, there is a tricorder in my cabinet over there. I never use the damn things. You are the scientist, see if you can figure it out."

Reece grabbed the tricorder and flipped it open. There was a small energy source coming from the corridor outside the Admiral's office. The stepped to the door and pulled open the access panel to operate the manual control. The door slowly slid open, and Reece stepped into the darkened corridor. He turned his scanner to the right, and saw the source of his energy reading. A device about the size of a medkit sat on the floor, glowing softly.

"It's a bomb!" Vox declared. "Let's get out of here!"

"No! Wait a minute." Reece said. "I don't think its a bomb. It looks like a dampening field emitter." Reece kneeled right beside the device, scanning it closely. "It's giving off all kind of electromagnetic interference. That's why the power flow is disrupted. It's probably booby trapped somehow."

"Then let's beam it out of here. I'll call Security."

"You can't. The field is also dampening transporters. We can only use handheld devices that have their own power source, like a tricorder or a phaser." Reece continued to scan, his tricorder picked up a faint signature coming from behind one of the doors. "What's in this room Admiral?"

"My personal server."

"Well I'm picking up a data stream. Someone is transmitting information from your server."

"What? No! That has Starship assignments for half the sectors in the Federation. If that fell into enemy hands..."

"Well its falling Admiral, like the nighttime temperature on Yensul's North Pole."

Dabin released the manual controls for the door and again the door slid open slowly. The room was dark except for the large cylindrical computer server sitting in the middle of the room that flashed with green indicator lights. Reece squinted into the soft green glow trying to make anything out.

Suddenly a large brown tendril shot out of the darkness, catching the Admiral square in the jaw and throwing him backwards. Reece dove away from the door.

"Admiral? Are you all right? Admiral?" Vox lay motionless on the floor. Reece reached up to the door control and cranked it closed. He consulted his tricorder reading to see what the hell had just happened.

"A changeling? Are you kidding me!?" There hadn't been a changeling on Earth since the Dominion War, and they had not been heard from since their surrender. This type of espionage could have been the prelude to a new offensive from an old enemy.

"All right Aquaman, it's you and me." Reece said to himself. "How are you running that computer and your dampening field at the same time? I'm betting you've got a shielded power source in there that you are using to repel the dampening field and power the computer." Reece examined his reading more closely, and found that there was indeed a power source the changeling had set up in the room.

"I'm going to use your dampening field against you. How does that taste? I'm going to wish I had a phaser when you come out of there all ticked off, but as Fleur would say, c'est le vie."

He examined the energy frequency of the power source in the room, and set his tricorder to emit an opposing wavelength to cancel out the shielding the changeling was using to protect his power supply. Reece closed the tricorder, which began to beep to indicate it was emitting the signal. Dabin opened the door just a crack, enough to pitch the tricorder into the room, then snapped the door shut.

"Of course you realize." Vox stood up from the floor, "That once you foiled the changeling's plans, he would most likely come out here and kill you." Vox flipped over the dampening field, tapped in a code, the device shut down. The lights in the corridor returned to normal.

"Wait? Huh! Hold on just a damn minute. How did you do that?"

"You are a fine officer Mr. Reece, but I questioned your ability to take things seriously, and make hard decisions."

"The changeling? I did see that thing smack you upside the grill didn't I?"

"Hologram. I know you've served as Chief of Science before, but your upcoming post is going to potentially be far more dangerous then anything you've done before. You are going to be working closely with technology and information that could destroy the Federation if it fell into the wrong hands."

Dabin pondered what Vox had said moments before, that the changeling would have killed him if the scenario was real.

"And I'll be expected to sacrifice myself to protect it, if the time comes."

"I'm glad to know there is a Starfleet officer who appreciates how serious this career can be, underneath your whimsical exterior. Now that we understand each other, let's talk a little more about the Serendipity."

"Oh hey, that was a dirty trick by the way! You had me scared to death!"

"I know, Mr. Reece."

"And I want a rematch at that shuttle game!"

"I'll set it up, Mr. Reece."


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Lt. Commander Dabin Reece
Chief Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012