A passerby could hear soft chatter coming from one of many popular establishments of Starbase 415. It was called Hakkoku. One of many renowned restaurants to survive Earth’s last world war and with the shift in economics, it became much more popular. Over the years, adaptations were made, but the quality of food and customer satisfaction had not faltered. As attractive as it is to visitors not homed to the station, it has become a frequent stop for many personnel. In fact, these group of officers had frequented to the establishment so often, they were well known by the bar tender and manager, Arata.

When a guest enters the establishment, they are welcomed by two greeters who always had a smile on their face. One was male and the other were female, both equally attractive to anyone who swung in a specific direction or in either direction; and if they were attracted to humans. One of the greeters will assign a waiter to a guest and the waiter will guide them to a large section of the restaurant that had many tables and booths. There were two of these sections, one to the left and one to the right, both separated by a middle path. Each sections were lower than the main floor that would have a several stairs located around the section, but they were only lowered to the point that each stair had two steps. At the very far end of the restaurant was a bar, with a counter that went wall to wall with each end having a ‘door’ for the restaurant personnel to cross. Now, in the center of the two sections were sushi bars, skilled sushi chefs prepare and serve their finest.

Throughout the entirety of when a guest enters the establishment to when they are seated and allowed to gather their food and drinks from the bars, their ears are filled with the soft and relaxing melodies that fill the restaurant. Guests could hear beautiful music coming from instruments like the shakuhachi, koto, tsuzumi and more. With all the restaurant had to offer, it would be no surprise to find it filled with various races. One could see a few Romulans, some Klingons, many from the Federation like Trill, Vulcan and Betazoid, but also those that the station neighbor, the Talarians.

At the main bar where Arata placed a tray filled with a few bottles and many cups onto the counter, one would find several young officers together. They all sat at the bar, conversing on the previous events that had unfolded before them, as well as celebrating the promotion that four members of their group had received. Although, one in particular was not entirely as excited as everyone else was.

Ruben Ortiz, or as his friends liked to call him, Ruby, sat there on his stool in the middle of the group as he stared into the counter. Well, while his eyes may be looking directly at the counter, he was off in his own thoughts. He was so entrenched that he had not noticed that Mizu had taken one of the sake bottles, while Theo dispersed the cups to everyone, and one of those cups had landed directly before his eyes where Mizu filled with Japanese liquor. That was when he felt a smack land on his shoulder, one of which had pulled him out of this thoughts and cause his to straighten up as he turned his head to lock his eyes with Mizu’s.

“Where have you been floating off to, Ruby?” Mizu asked.

Ruby smirked before he turned his gaze to the cup filled sake before him, only to return his gaze back to Mizu. “Just processing everything that has happened to us. That’s all.”

“Yeah, how was nearly getting shot by a satellite feel?” Ruby heard from Utsall, the Klingon security officer who had her eyes set on Zane since long before Ruby and his friends had ever met her, so Ruby has been told.

“It was a bit nerve racking. It was not something I had expected when I was trying to reset the system so it would not be stuck in a diagnostic loop,” Ruby explained. It was the reason why the small array of six satellites outside the asteroid field in this star system were not communicating with the station, let alone allowing the station to communicate to anyone outside the star system while their long range communication systems were offline. It was a nifty kind of redundancy to have, if long range comms were down, they could simply link up with the satellites with short range and use them as a temporary long range comm system. That is, if the changeling had not tampered with them.

“Luckily I had caught it when I did and pushed him out of the way. Or he would have a hole in his chest,” said Mizu as Ruby watched as she brought her cup to her lips and downed the sake, only to refill the cup later with more from the bottle. “But because I saw it, we knew what to look for on the other satellites.”

“Couldn’t the station just send a simple command to break the loop that the satellites were in?” Theo asked, as Ruby noticed that he took small sips out of his cup.

Ruby shook his head. “No. Isolinear chips were installed that were causing the loops. At one of the satellites that we had fixed, we found a workbee floating near by. Unfortunately the occupant was…well, dead. The bee was heavily modified, likely from the Borg nanites that the young officer provided. But it wasn’t meant to be out there so far away from the station and the oxygen supply ran out.”

“And while you were fixing the satellites, me and K’Roll were helping the Hazard Team locate the Tholian Ambassador,” Ruby heard from Elidia.

“Is that how you guys got promoted?” Theo asked.

Ruby smirked with a small shrug. “I think it was just a matter of time. You know how it is. You’re only an Ensign for so long.” Ruby then felt Mizu slug him on the shoulder right before he could take a drink of the sake in his cup. The blow had made his whole arm shake and caused him to spill the sake onto the counter. Next thing he knew, he had a rag slap him in the face, to which he grabbed and saw the look on Arata’s face. Ruby gave him an apologetic look before he cleaned up his mess, and then glared at Mizu.

Mizu only laughed before she took another shot. “He’s half right,” She started after she gulped down the sake. “I think risking our lives and going above and beyond had some merit to it.”

“We did find the Ambassador after all,” Ruby heard from K’Roll.

“But nothing as heroic as what Commander Ryker did!” Elidia’s voice rose up a bit too loud, especially for one who sat right next to him, which made him stick his pinky into his ear and rub it a bit in an attempt to sooth it. Surely the sake was synthahol…right? Only one way to find out, since Mizu did the honors of refilling his cup for him, even though she was the reason he had spilled in the first place. Ruby brought the cup to his lips and with one motion, he threw his head back and gulped down the liquid to feel it burning as it went down. Nope. It was the real deal. He could already feel his cheeks starting to warm up.

“What did the commander do?” Ruby heard the question come from Mazak. Strange how far the Gorn had come over these years. He remembered digging into Starfleet history, years of Captain Pike and the Enterprise crew and how their encounter with the Gorn was quite unpleasant.

“Well, from what Porter and Clarke told me, members of Team Alpha, the one Commander Ryker commands. Well, they told me that, while Captain Maxwell was with them, trying to talk the changeling down,” Ruby heard Elidia pause, clearly she needed to rephrase her story a bit. “I mean, the Captain tried but the changeling was going to shoot the Ambassador no matter what and he was some how established some live feed. Clarke said that Gomez was in the stolen craft, the Albano Lacus, trying to disable the feed, because apparently the range was far enough to reach into Tholian space and well you know.”

Ruby was sure everyone could figure it out, but he went over it in his head anyway, because it was one of the events that he was processing earlier. The range was enough to reach one of the Tholian border outposts that it essentially got bounced to the homeworld and Ruby thought, if the Ambassador had indeed died and some how the changeling was able to make it appear as though Starfleet killed the Ambassador, being that the changeling was pretending to be Damien Hill, the station’s Chief Strategic Operations Officer. The thought Ruby was processing was, would that have thrown the Federation into another war? How would they fight an enemy that they barely know? And with Starbase 415 being the front line of defense, how would they have fend off the Tholians? It was a lot for Ruby to process, too much to even comprehend with what little information they have. But it had made him wonder, no matter what assignment he and his friends were on, there was always something going on that was either incredibly dangerous or potentially had enormous risk to it.

He pulled himself back out of his thoughts to hear Elidia finish the story. “And then Ryker jumped right in between the Ambassador and the changeling that he took the shot! If it had not been for the armor he was wearing, he certainly would of been dead.”

“Why wouldn’t the changeling try to vaporize the Ambassador? Would that not have been more effective?” Mazak had asked.

“Yeah, I was curious about that too. Are you sure that Porter and Clarke told you the whole story? Accurately?” Theo asked Elidia.

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is, the Ambassador is safe. I heard he was due to return to the station next week, so I guess the Tholians are not too angry?” Elidia said that in a form of a question but what answer was she looking for? Ruby wasn’t sure.

Ruby rotated in his seat and let out a huge sigh. “It doesn’t matter and I am not going to dwell on it any longer. Point is. The possibility of war has been averted. None of us, that we can remember, had killed anyone that we knew of when we were under the influence of Borg weirdness.” He admits that he forgot what the term was. “Though, can’t say the same for a lot of the junior officers here. Nevertheless, the four of us being Junior Lieutenants won’t change anything. We’re still going to get the same crappy assignments. In fact, I’m sure we will be cataloging some cargo in one of the cargo bays tomorrow.” Groans were heard coming from his friends, all because he reminded them that their little vacation time was going to come to an end after they wake up for duty tomorrow.

“Way to buzzkill there, Ruby,” said Mizu, where Ruby could see the look of disgust on her face until she stuck her tongue out at him, which showed him that she was merely teasing. Typical Mizu, he thought, so he never took her too words too seriously.

“Yeah, what a party pooper!” Elidia shouted before she clamped a hand over her mouth. One of the few simple rules of the Hakkoku, don’t be loud. In fact, they all heard a sound of a throat being cleared by Arata, who Ruby looked at to see him glaring at Elidia. “Sorry!” Ruby heard Elidia’s whispers and that seemed to have satisfied Arata. For now.

“Come on. Let’s get some food and try to have fun with as much time as we have left,” said Ruby, as he attempted to make amends for bringing up work.

“Good! Then we can work on pulling out some information out of Theo about who he’s crushing on!” Mizu teased once again but Theo was still learning of Mizu’s ways and took the bait.

“Wha-what?! Who told you that?!” And Theo had given it away, where Mizu and Elidia did their ‘ooooo’s’, to which Ruby had joined in, of course.

Part One of Two