Deep in the central core of Sha Ka Ree the city’s chief engineer was dealing with the most important task on his to do list. His new uniform.

Since the Kolar joined the Federation their military forces were slowly being integrated into Starfleet. Over half the Orr’sal, the Kolar Ministry of Defence’s science and exploration division, had been taken into Starfleet and given a six week crash course on regulations, protocol and all the bells and whistles that came with that silver arrowhead at the Christopher Pike Academy. Since being assigned to Sha Ka Ree, Tenagra had avoided the transition more than he‘d avoided deodorant and hair care products. It took four weeks to get him to sign up for the course and it was by no means voluntary.

In the Orr’sal things weren’t as black and white as Starfleet. While military officers had their skills and specialities, the core of the service were essentially soldiers and administrators. The bulk of specialists were civilian experts contacted to work alongside the military answering to and commanded by military officers. The soldiers may run the Orr’sal, but the civilian specialists carried out the primary directives. In their mind, including Tenagra, they ran the show. A mindset which saw the two sides clash on one occasion, yet for some reason there hadn’t been a mass riot or a mutiny. Not yet, anyway.

When the Orr’sal officers were absorbed into Stafleet the process was viewed upon as a simple task.. Trading one uniform for another at it‘s most basic. With the civilians on the payroll and their unwillingness to follow orders things became a little more complicated than the MOD hasdplanned.

In the end Starfleet decided to offer them commissions, mostly as enlisted personnel, but respect their ways and continue to use them within their fields. The Ministry of Defence, who were directly in charge of the Orr‘sal and all military sectors, would hand pick and submit any candidates who should receive a fully commissioned rank. To make things more complicated they wouldn’t be offered Starfleet rank, but matching Kolar titles, moving officially into the Starfleet structure upon promotion.

This gave many Starfleet officers a headache. Particularly because the MOD rank system didn‘t match up.
Tenagra loved the Kolar simplicity. One rank, translating as Colonel, for commanding officers, another, Lt. Colonel for their executives. Lieutenants made up senior staff and the rest were simply Officers.

At the bottom of the ladder were provisional junior officer ranks. It was like a trial period which came after three years off training and upon completing several tasks and exams you became a Junior. With his position in the Kolar Tenagra was on par with the Lieutenants, a senior member of staff but didn‘t have to submit to any military order. Plus all the enlisted crew, all simply known as Crewmen, were treated like his personal slaves and coffee grabbers. Being treated as personal assistants was far from their job description, but that’s the way the specialists liked it and the crewmen were ordered not to rock the boat.

At the very top were the big bosses. The Generals. Whom he personally liked to ignore at any cost. They mixed in with the rest of the command officers like they were all one big happy fleet, but the generals were the ones pushing the orders and signing all the paperwork. He could deal with his own command officers but to him the generals were the ones who came in and spoiled the party, stomping on all his favourite toys when his direct superiors couldn’t stop him playing.

With Tenagra being a high level development engineer on their primary research facility, the MOD wanted to ensure he would remain in a top line position. After a lot of debate, after all civilians and military personnel didn’t mix as well as they do in Starfleet, the big party spoiling bosses went out of their way to offer him the rank of a Colonel, which Starfleet decided matched that of captain. When Tenagra moved to become Chief Engineer of the Kolar capital they insisted he accept the title to go with the position.
He refused.

When the Orr’sal recruited Tenagra he was working alone on the Helian Homeworld in his own lab. He was obsessed with science and technology, constantly inventing and re-inventing on his own time at his own expense. A lot of his idea’s failed, some spectacularly, but when his tenacity and imagination paid of with success it was a marvellous work of genius. A genius the Kolar couldn’t ignore. With the latinum, facilities and free reign they offered him to move his work to Ree’Cha he quickly packed up shop.

Despite what the Kolar thought, he didn’t do it for the money they threw at him or the recognition it would bring. He did it for all the things he could gain. He accepted because there were goals he wanted to achieve. When they offered him more than his work and tied to use him for their own goals he rejected them. He wasn’t selfish enough to flash around Colonel bars and didn’t care about the military enough to let himself become a pawn. He was a selfless man.

No, wait… he was a selfish man. Colonels made less latinum and he wasn’t taking a pay cut.

But the downfall was that now Starfleet were his lords and masters there were certain stipulations he was asked to accept. Stipulations that he knew how to bypass working for the MOD. The first gripe being techno babble. He hated when people made things complicated. He didn’t want to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. He wanted to connect the green thing to the blue thing so it’s stuff went the other way to make a cheerful buzz. Working alone for so long, he had his own way of doing things.

His second gripe was despite being a civilian he was still on a Starfleet operated facility working under Starfleet rules which required a Starfleet uniform. No more would he be free to wear whatever clothes he could find on his floor and go to work smelling like an old shoe. He had to put on his dull black slacks and golden shirt to represent he was now a Starfleet engineer. Conforming to the ideals and beliefs the Federation held true. He hated the idea and he wanted to hate the uniform. But as he was being fitted he found himself finding it far too comfortable with his liking.

He had already been fitted for what would likely be his most worn outfit; a grey one -piece with deep blue shoulder décor and conveniently placed pockets to hold all his favourite tools and gadgets. At least he got more than one choice of undershirt. The gold t-shirt he was wearing now and one grey with gold down the sides and a nice comfy black long sleeved top still in visual range in the corner of his eye folded up in a nice pile. Variety. A variety so dull he wanted to stab out his eyes with a flux coupler, but still variety.

Four sets of each had already been dumped in a case ready for him to take away. He just wanted the rest to be tailored to fit so he could get away as soon as possible and pretend the whole experience never happened. Looking in the mirror he could see his career dwindling away.

Commander Kirkpatrick watched as he grimaced at his own reflection trying to find something about the outfit to nit pick. Then he found it.

“Shouldn’t I be wearing that bluish colour? Teal, is it?” He asked, still gazing in the mirror.

Amy frowned. “You’re chief engineer. Engineers wear gold.” She said. Again. She’d had this conversation three times already throughout his training course on protocol. He pretended not to like the trainee uniform either.

“But I’m a scientist.” The Helian argued.

“Your job here is as an engineer, you’ll wear engineer colours.” Amy retorted, failing to hide the boredom of repeating herself. “Besides, you told me you look terrible in teal.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you complaining?”

“I’m not.” Tenagra sighed. “I just don’t see how the uniform makes me do my job any better.”

“According to Commander Chel’si’s reports you’re not doing your job terribly well as it is.”

As the words left Amy’s mouth, Tenagra’s mouth dropped in shock. “I’m brilliant! She just doesn’t like me.” He finally said. “She doesn’t like the way I do things, but…” Head shaking and finger wagging began as if it made his point stronger. “…I get better results doing it my way than her way.”

“You mean the Starfleet way?” Amy asked. “Commander Chel’si is the chief of operations which in this city makes her your immediate superior and you need to learn to accept her opinion and suggestions. I’m tired of hearing you two complain about each other and you’ve only been here for seven weeks.” She blurted out. “Being chief engineer here is a huge responsibility, I need to know you’re taking your job seriously.”

“Of course I’m taking my job seriously.” Tenagra said as the tailor finished bringing in the waistline. “Honestly Commander, do you seriously think training me up on your terms and rules will make me a better engineer?”

Amy shook her head. “No. But both she and I need to know we can rely on you. You need to learn to work with her, not against her.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Completing paperwork and submitting it to her at the end of the day would be a huge step forward. When she sets you a task she needs to know it’s been completed and be aware of any problems.”

“Fine.” Tenagra said as the tailor began fixing his sleeve length. “But she has to respect my work just as much as I will her.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Now… I have your first assignment as an official Starfleet employee.”

“Oh?”

“During your final exam today one of the generators in the lower core went offline. Your teams haven’t been able to find the problem, the modifications you made to the power relays are a bit…” She stalled to find the right word. Chaotic wouldn‘t be polite. A complete shambles would be worse. “Beyond them.”

Tenagra took a moment to think. “That’s odd. I’ve had a few fluctuations in several of the power relays in the past few weeks. The problem wasn’t mechanical, there were a few bugs in the programming that I had trouble flushing out.”

“A side effect from your modifications?”

“No. I resent the implication.” Tenagra defended himself, even though he was unsure if he was to blame or not. “Maybe.” He changed his mind. “I don’t think so. I have my notes in my workshop. I’ll go over them in the morning and see if I can find the problem. But it’s probably connected.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well… all the major computer systems are connected to the computer core. The core is designed to update and maintain itself, essentially grow and learn on it’s own. When it reprograms itself to a higher level it will send out the upgrades throughout the network of primary systems. I’d say one of the upgrades were flawed and that’s how the relays were infected.”

Most of this was new information to Amy. She didn’t know how the systems on Sha Ka Ree worked, she just took it for granted that they would. “So the generators are connected to this network?”

“Yes…” As the tailor finished off the uniform, Tenagra smiled. “But it’s easily fixed.”

“Let Chel’si know when the generators back online.” Amy smiled as she turned to leave. “Oh, and welcome to Starfleet.”
With her feet barely out the door she could hear Tenagra shouting to tell her that her desktop in her office had been repaired, in between grumbles directed towards the tailor.

A part of her dreaded returning to the office. She told Tenagra that her interface wasn’t working. She knew he’d not only repair it, he’d do things to it. With Tenagra he couldn’t just fix a problem, or let one of technicians do the job. He had to get involved personally and he wouldn’t just see a problem and fix it. He would find problems, change settings, add software, change the colour scheme and probably play around with her chair while he was at it. She half expected the room to be painted lime green when she returned.

Sauntering down the oversized corridor the Commander pulled her Link handset out of it’s brace on her hip. One glance at it made her sigh in sheer disappointment. Her schedule seemed full of meetings with half the transitioned crew, quick personal development follow ups her Ops Manager had submitted. Somehow she was supposed to fit in her regular workload as well as oversee the entire running of the city and stand in as representative in a council meeting to discuss the best possible and most efficient form of waste extraction. Of course she had to meet with the region command to discuss what would be the pointless waste of time the meeting would turn out to be, who would then nitpick every decision the council made and moan about them interfering in the city operation knowing full well the Admirals and officials involved didn’t care nor had the authority to complain or enforce any change of their own. The glamour of her job.

The annoying thing was it wasn’t her job. Sure, she did take a lot of responsibilities in running the city. But it was the commanding officers job to deal with the council and doing all the hard work. Her administrative and supervisory duties were a walk in the park compared to politicians talking about the best way to dispose of her excrement with an overpowering false passion.

Looking back at her schedule as she turned a corner into a staircase to the next level, Amy checked to make sure she had enough to do before having to return to the chaos of her ’fixed’ computer. In desperation to avoid a return she added a few more tasks before sauntering down the corridor on her way to meet the oh so lovable council.
The sooner Admiral Rogan returned the better.

It had been a long and dreary trip to Earth, but as Rogan walked out of his ship and felt the ground of his home world beneath his feet his mind went back to the old cliché; There’s no place like home.

Walking from the landing bay, beginning to make his way through the gardens towards the central building, his thoughts drifted to the last time he was on Earth. It felt like another lifetime ago. Officers had gone from wearing overpowering coloured tunics to the new black and blue outfits inspired by new members in the Federation. Though most officers ditched the jacket to leave their colour coded short sleeved shirts on display for casual comfort. Of course now there were variations on uniform and at Headquarters most of the officers inside the building staring at star charts were dressed in their dark formal tunics. Rogan wished he had a choice.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he got away with basking in the comfort of a line officers uniform but at his post the other Admirals had an ‘all in’ policy. The idea was to be democratic. If most of the Admiralty didn’t want to wear the formal uniform, then that was fine. But soon the majority vote seemed to be drowned out by the highest ranking member of the group who adored the formal look. In his opinion it made him look handsome and dashing.

Rogan’s problem was that the formal look the look Kolar Regional Command had adopted was a longer version of the formal tunic. It came with a nice shiny belt buckle with the Command emblem, gold trimming and braids on the sleeve just in case you missed the rank bars on the collars reminding you that yes indeed, Micheal Rogan is an Admiral.

None of that bothered him. What bothered him was that it was white. Ivory, his tailor would argue. But whatever word you’d use wouldn’t take away the fact that Rogan was a middle aged man who was showing his age. He had wrinkles, hair had gone missing and any that stayed seemed to be turning silver. Which was just a nice word for grey. More importantly when one is wearing a white tunic that he couldn’t help but feel would be fitting if he were in Roman times, it pointed out to the universe “I am Micheal Rogan, and I can’t fight the flab any more!”

It was another niggling thing that made him feel like an old man. He never thought he would feel that way but at times it seemed as if the universe had broken him.

Once upon a time he would lay outside, not too far away, and gaze at the stars dreaming of walking amongst them. The dream came true when he started on the command path and then he arrived at Sha Ka Ree, a city sized space station orbiting the central planet of their new allies built as a symbol of peace between the two governments. The years that followed saw him usher the relationship from allies of the Federation to fully fledged members and from there they had the base for Kolar Regional Command, the centre of operations based on his station and soon he found himself trapped in politics, the middle man in squabbles between Admirals and attending conferences for things he had little to no interest in. He loved the city, and he loved the job. But as he felt his belly begin to swell and his hairline push back to mirror Klingon style, he had began to wonder what happened to his dream of sitting in the ‘big chair’ of a starship.

He didn’t even have a chair. Not a chair he could feel bold and dashing in anyway. He had a comfortable chair behind a comfortable desk in a comfortable command centre. After all the years he’d spent dreaming of a captains chair, ‘the’ chair, he’d done the career equivalent of trading in his dream job for a pipe and slippers.

But, as little comfort as it sometime was, he knew that when he was long gone the legacy he left behind would survive for a long time to come. When the Federation’s flag was beginning to look less appealing to the quadrant he helped turn the Kolar from allies to partners in the grand collection of governments and through them coming on board the Federation was given access to new worlds, new technologies, new possibilities. When things were getting desperate and moral was at an all time low the Kolar breathed fresh hope into them all. It had taken a long time to recover from the trials of war and the fallout of the collapse of the Romulan empire, but finally the Federation had a chance to put it all behind them and grow strong again. He was a key part of that and he couldn’t be more proud of that achievement.

In a strange way it all started the last time he walked on these grounds. He made the walk to the Director of Operations office not long after being made temporary executive officer of the Dauntless when the previous ‘number one’ was killed in action, causing Rogan to spring into action. He was expecting to be told he was to be reassigned but was overjoyed to find out he was being put on the command path under his captains supervision. From there he learned a great deal about being the man in charge, learning a wealth of knowledge and deep respect for his captains culture, a culture that lay in the heart of the Kolar.

As he arrived in the lobby of the Headquarters and made his way to his assigned briefing room he wished this trip to Earth could be the source of more good news, but the presentation he was carrying with him was far from optimistic. Years after coming to Earth to hear his life was changing for the better, he had returned with a message of doom and gloom. It wasn’t his best day.

When he entered the conference lounge he was met by a swarm of Admirals, all in their white tunics giving Rogan flashbacks of toga parties from his Academy days. With the handshakes over and done with he took his seat and the meeting was underway with the usual introductions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that this meeting is classified.” The Commander in Chief warned as he stood at the speakers podium before introducing Rogan and his presentation.

Feeling the heavy burden on his shoulders Rogan took the stand and began to tell them the story that he was sure would depress even the cheeriest flag officer. “To cut to the chase, I have reason to believe that the Kolar Regional Command has been infiltrated by an unknown alien force.”

It was by far the most interesting and attention grabbing opening line he’d ever said in a meeting to date. But it had the Admiralty hooked instantly.

From there Rogan told them of his tale. The strange decisions made by Riesman that reflected an infiltration on Earth forty years ago, classified operations hidden from the Kolar section of the command structure, ships going missing and returning to base with their crew behaving oddly. Even reports of Starfleet offivers confidentially giving evidence that the Independence was attacked and destroyed by their own fleet.

He chose his words carefully, making his presentation as brief as possible making sure to highlight the dangers of what threats an infiltration could bring and the urgency of detecting the source and investigating even if he was wrong. The Kolar was their last best hope.

The Admirals seemed shocked. Comments and criticisms were thrown at Rogan, they argued over the improbabilities, their fears, their denial and every time they argued Rogan argued back. When the battle of words were over and an eerie silence fell upon the room, one of the Admirals spoke out.

“Intelligence has heard the rumours too.” His Bolian accent said, uncharacteristically quietly. The statement clearly a shock to everyone else. Rogan began to wonder if the Bolian Admiral, the man in charge of Starfleet Intelligence had been sitting on this for a while. “You’re in a much better position to investigate the matter than we are.”

The meeting erupted again with arguments thrown around the huge table everyone was sitting around but when the dust settled almost everyone agreed. The possibility of their new hope falling to an alien force was too great to ignore. A lot of them didn’t believe Rogan, they had no faith in his argument despite the respect he had gained in his career in the Kolar region. Some just didn’t want to hear it. But doing nothing would be irresponsible. It would be ‘downright foolish’ as Rogan put it.

When Rogan left the room he felt accomplished. He had the green light to find whoever was behind the infiltration and exterminate it before it does any serious damage. With the backing of Command he had the authority to do everything he needed to in order to get the job done.

In the days that followed Command worked with Rogan to take steps on Earth to protect the core of the Federation. With the President fully briefed he went into seclusion, signing power over to Command to take action on his behalf until the threat was assessed and defeated. The move allowed Command to take pre-emptive moves against the possibility reaching their treasured world.

For all the effort and all the caution, it would all amount to nothing. Rogan didn’t know it at the time, but there was nothing he could do to change the course of fate.

In a matter of weeks Earth was lost.