The Lakota is now en-route to the badlands under the orders of Admiral Leyton.

It’s not often that a Captain see’s behind the veil of the Admiralty. I can’t say that I’m overly inspired by what I witnessed. Bickering and favour trading like school children on a playground rather than men treating each other with mutual respect and working together to reach a shared understanding. Still, Jack (Tracy) has always had a way with words and got what he wanted, albeit with some strings attached.

The conditions for this mission are clear, the Lakota herself will have to stay outside the plasma storms and Jack can take a shuttle in to do his scans. I can’t say it’s unreasonable, even if the Excelsior class could navigate through on paper - which it can’t - this ship has already had one bad experience with rogue energy discharges. I’m not keen to put her in a position where she’s struck by another if it can be avoided. Jack can bring along all the engineers from McKinley that he likes, they’re used to building ships from the keel up, not doing a mid-flight patch up.

The other string is that one of Leytons staff - Erika Benteen - is along for the ride. Officially she’s here to oversee transport of some classified cargo to Deep Space Nine, but I know she’s really here not just to keep an eye on Jack, but on me and my crew as well. It’s an open secret that Leyton is extremely paranoid about Maquis extremism.

She can cast all the lines she wants. She won’t catch any fish here.

The things we put up with for love.