“I’m hesitant”, Jonathan was quick to say, without trying to push very close to receiving an order. “Do we have a reason why we need to do this, or some explanation as to what the aftermath or reasoning could be?”

“No, it’s not ideal. But neither is giving them the chance to regain their strength.”

He sat at the screen, and his mind started to imagine a bad outcome, but he knew he had no choice but to carry out the request. Reluctantly, he accepted and nodded, “OK, I will formulate a plan to bring them out. What are my orders when they show up and take the bait?”

“Alert us of their location, and we will assist.” Sydin explained. “You will have backup.”

“No problem, I will assemble the crew and formulate a plan within the hour”

“Much appreciated.”

The conversation ended, and the viewscreen turned black.

Jonathan stood up from his desk and stared out of the window. The last few hours had been tiresome for the crew, and he knew this would push them to their limits, he got on the communicator to bring his XO up to speed.

=^= Commander Parker, please report to my office =^=

Eliza entered the Captain’s office with a PADD in hand. She could see him standing by the window and knew well enough when his body language gave away a troublesome request: “Yes, sir?”

“How are the crew holding up?” Reilly said

The XO was prepared for this question. Before entering the room, she already had her report in hand, and all details had been passed to her in the last 30 minutes. “All stations reporting ready, communications are local, and anything further than a next sector reach is still down. Engineering have advised a slow and steady movement when required, and sickbay are reporting no injuries or requests sustained in the last hour”

Jonathan started pacing back and forth behind his desk, processing what he was doing and how to lure out the ship he had been assigned to deal with. “The Vaadwaur have been using the corridors for unplanned attacks on the civilian ships and outposts in the area. Since the blackout, they have started to increase their presence, and some other crews have not been so lucky,” he said while staring at the wall.

“I’ve just come off with Starfleet, sub space communication, it was choppy so not sure if we will get anything again soon, they want us to flush out a ship somehow, for what reasons I am unsure, but we need to start to work out a way to do this, inform the crew and involve the relevant teams to come up with a plan within the next hour”

Eliza took down the information as best she could. Knowing the pressure this would bring, she chose to keep the information to a minimum for now. “Yes, Sir, I will come back with a status report soon with the decided approach and debrief with the senior staff”