USS McKenzie: Reading the Message

The doors to the ready room opened with a whoosh, and Captain Riker walked right in and hurried behind the small private desk. Flipping open the console he spoke.

"Computer play encoded message. Captain's authorization Riker, Joshua W. authorization alpha, seven, alpha, three"

The console beeped in approval and the text of the message began to display across the screen.

"What the hell?" Riker questioned aloud to himself.

While the message was broken and partially fragmented, most likely from the nature of its origin, the coding was clear. To the open surprise of the Captain, this message was a Starfleet distress call. In all his years of service, Riker had never seen a ship send a distress call over one specific narrow channel and could not even begin to imagine why. Thoughts of hiding the message came to mind, as it was both coded and narrow band, but who sends out an open distress call with the intent of no one hearing it? Riker was baffled as he paused reading for a moment only to tap his combadge.

"Number one, this is the captain. I will fill you in on the details in a moment, but this message is a distress call from a Federation ship. Take the McKenzie to the Paulson nebula. Stay outside the nebula for now, but I want us headed towards the region this message came from"

As Captain Riker continued to the read the message, the questions piled on faster than they were answered. The message went on to describe an unregistered experimental Federation vessel, designation NX-666, that had encountered an enemy and were under attack. This new ship, identified only as the USS First Legion, had sustained heavy damage during the attack and drifted into the nebula. Interference from the nebula had rendered their systems offline and they were reporting multiple hull breaches and hundreds of casualties.

"Damn" Riker muttered.

This words were all the Captain could muster as he slumped back in his chair and rubbed his beard. Responding to this distress call would take the McKenzie off course and away from their current mission. More importantly than that however, it would take a ship designed for combat directly towards the Romulan neutral zone. This was Captain Riker's first tour as commanding officer, and the mission at hand just got a lot more complicated. Standing Riker adjusted his uniform and exited his ready room heading back towards the bridge.