Love In The Abstract.
The USS Enterprise D eased her way into the remote star system. On the Bridge, the crew worked with their usual calm efficiency, but throughout the ship there was a subtle tension, an almost surety that they would soon be in battle. For over four months a group of well equipped mercenaries had been raiding ships, their methods were business-like and systematic, but what had spread horror through the crew of the mighty Starship was what the mercenaries had done to their unfortunate victims. They were not just merciless, but deliberately cruel…sadistic even. There were never any survivors. Ships had been found adrift, picked clean of any and every piece of salvageable equipment, but it was the mutilated bodies that sent such a shiver down the spines of the rescue teams. It was patently obvious that the mercenaries took pleasure in their atrocities, making some kind of statement in their brutality. It was only two hours previous that the Enterprise had left yet another lifeless hulk of a ship adrift in space as she followed a quickly attenuating ion trail, the first of which had been thus found. It seems they had arrived only an hour or two since the pirates had left. Captain Jean-Luc Picard was seated in the Command Chair, legs crossed and seemingly relaxed. To his right sat Commander William Riker, the ship’s First Officer. At Ops, the only android to serve in Starfleet, Lieutenant Commander Data, turned his head and said quietly, “We are approaching a star system, Captain. The ion trail seems to be leading us to the third planet, an M class similar in size to Earth.” In his deep baritone, Jean-Luc said softly, “Helm, drop to one quarter impulse.” Behind the Captain, at Tactical, stood the imposing figure of Lieutenant Commander Worf. A Klingon, he was tense, his warrior’s instincts finely tuned. His basso rumble only served to heighten the already tense atmosphere. “Captain, I advise you to raise shields.”
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