// Observation Lounge / Conference Table //



Cayden sat up straight, alert, cross-legged in her chair. When she sat
'properly' in what was an oversized chair for her, she was unable to
sit up straight. If she allowed the backs of her knees to bend at the
front edge of the seat, she could not lean back against the rest
without slouching. DiNay rarely slouched. And her feet did not touch
the ground. She felt like a child on a child on a physician’s exam
table. DiNay did not like physician's exam tables. If she pressed her
hips and back tightly against the backrest, the calves of her legs
were supported by the seat of the chair, and stuck straight out in
front of her. This might not have been as uncomfortable, but she felt
immobile, unable to spring up and move with purpose. Thus, she curled
her legs under her, sat up tall to her maximum, and her face reflected
the confidence of an officer, if her physique did not.



The smell of the Captain's coffee always brought a strange melancholia
to her heart she did not fully understand. It was related to the
agitated, antagonistic, and hostile relationship she had oddly enjoyed
with Jandre Szôlösi. Szôlösi had existed on coffee.



Szôlösi had captured her aboard the Destiny, resulting in her failure
to sabotage the vessel and render it into the hands of Red Sigma. That
failure, she now knew, had cost her family their lives at the
deceiving hands of Red Sigma, and that had included the life of her
two-cycle old daughter. She should have killed Szôlösi.



Instead, circumstances had contrived to result in her aiding Szôlösi
and his employer, SDA, in infiltrating Red Sigma, and alerting her
homeworld to the Red deception rampant in every element of their
society. The incident had not freed her homeworld. In fact the
destabilization of Red Sigma's 'game' had thrown the Aldeans into a
much bloodier conflict. But THAT conflict was not SDA's problem. The
mission had been to destabilized Red Sigma's hold in the Mercid
system; that had been accomplished. No one knew it was SDA, the dark
hand of the Federation, who had slipped the grit into the slick Red
operation.



DiNay had a mysterious connection to Szôlösi she could not explain. It
imitated love, but without affection that she could articulate. She
felt a fierce loyalty, which to her logical mind, was totally
undeserved. And in multiple visions, she had foreseen his death in
some mysterious connection with the Vulcans. Her vision had not been
the way of his actual death, and yet she deeply grieved both his
envisioned death, and his actual death on Aldea, perpetrated by Red
Sigma. She had watched as the plasma bolt hit, the life shuddered out
of him, and he lay still. The others had dragged her with them,
promising the second team would extract the body. But she had never
seen it. There was no acknowledgment of his death. When she had asked
Director Misato, the woman had merely looked at her impassively and
replied, "File's closed, Cayden."



Cayden DiNay was not a generally sentimental person. Her passions were
strong, but she did not allow her fierce emotion to overpower her
thinking or behavior. That made her a good operative, first for the
Resistance Militia of Aldea, then for Red Sigma, and for SDA, and now
for S31. But she no longer drank coffee. That was her way of saluting
Jandre Szôlösi.



In another outrageous twist of circumstance, Cayden rightfully
abandoned her loyalty to Red Sigma, fled her homeworld, as she was now
Red Sigma's prime suspect as the subversive element, and after endless
days of grueling 'debriefing sessions' with SDA's top management, she
had managed to secure a provisionary pardon for trying to steal the
Destiny and being accomplice to killing 11 crewmembers in the failed
attempt, avoided long term confinement in exchange for service to SDA,
and had quite sincerely defected to her one time enemy, the Federation.



For reasons she was not highly placed enough to know, Misato had
'loaned' her and another agent, the Andorian, to a dark operations
unit of Starfleet, known as Section 31, and assigned to the beautiful
starship known as Wildcard. Now she sat in the Observation Deck
listening to the Commanding Officer of that ship, Capt Firestorm,
outline the current situation on the ship, and the upcoming mission
assignment.



<start quote: Firestorm > " … going back to Outpost 87… a hidden
timeship .. headache begins with Admiral Warfield and Admiral Doruk.
Both men are determined to find it for unknown purposes of their
own. ... we have a shapeshifter aboard and it is causing hassles ...
Should the shapeshifter had found its way in here -it would not have
survived the specialized forcefield." ... She took a bag out of her
uniform pocket and handed them each a new Bridge communicator. "The
new communicators have the crew implanted transponder signals. The
shapeshifter may be able to change into one of us, but it will not
have the transponder. ... I want him off my ship and out an airlock
door. No questions asked. Right any questions?” <end quote>



Cayden lifted her hand from the arm of the chair to subtly attract the
Captain’s attention. Once acknowledged, she spoke. “I’m still new to
your operation, so correct me if I am out of order. Would the timeship
perhaps have some kind of temporal signature out of harmonic with
normal time-sensors by which we could identify it, or trace it? Comm
sensor delays or glitches, evidence of residual propulsion signatures
the age of which might be out of sequence with some time standard,
like a pulsing quasar in our timeline?”



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