Sleight3

    The team hustled off to find a groundskipper. Within moments, they had located one and had it running. “Remember the way?” Commander Vaughn asked Ames, who was sitting in the driver’s seat.
     The Chief of Security nodded. “I think so,” he said. “Let’s find out.” With that, the small team jetted off to find their comrades.

     Back on the Explorer, things were getting worse. Since the away team had beamed down to the planet, forty-three members had disappeared. Thankfully, no one from the bridge crew had come up missing yet. “It’s like a sleight of hand,” Lieutenant Hardy had remarked.
     Eager to know why mostly engineers had been in the majority, Mansel was back in Engineering.                  “What’s so popular about engineers that makes them disappear the most?” Captain Mansel asked Lieutenant Commander Fleury. He couldn’t help but remember that he himself had once been an Engineer.
    Fleury shrugged as he leaned against a console. “Aside from our charming introverted personalities, I’m not sure,” he replied.
     Mansel took a moment to steal a glance at Lieutenant Patterson again. There she was, so beautiful and full of life—
    “Captain,” Fleury interrupted, “at the current rate of abduction, the whole crew will be gone in two days.”
    “Two days…” in two days, Mansel would cease to have a ship or a crew. The Explorer, under his command, hadn’t been in space six months yet; it’d be a shame. He’d also shame his father, the former commander of the Explorer, and that was the last thing Mansel wanted.
    Totally changing the subject, Fleury asked, “Why don’t you ask her out on a date?”
    “Huh?” asked Mansel, totally caught off guard. “Ask who?”
    “Lieutenant Patterson, of course. It’s obvious that you like her. I’d suggest that you ask her out before she—or you—disappear.”
    Before Mansel could respond, the LCD display near Fleury beeped. Reaching behind him, Fleury hit the button.
   “Fleury here.”
   “Lieutenant Commander Fleury, is Captain Mansel there?” asked Lieutenant Commander Broadaway. The helmsman was monitoring the bridge while Mansel and Vaughn were away.
    Mansel stepped into the screen where Broadaway could see him. “I’m right here, Broadaway,” he said.      “What’s wrong?”
   “It’s Lieutenant Talaj, sir,” said the obviously worried helmsman, face scrunched up. “She’s gone.”
   There was no time for thinking about Lieutenant Patterson. “Open a channel to the Palla regent, Lieutenant Hardy,” he ordered. “I want to talk to him. Now.”
    After a few seconds, a very tired-looking Regent Postov appeared on the miniature screen. “What is it, Captain?” the regent asked.
    “Regent Postov, another forty-four of my crew has come up missing. Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
    Once again, the regent denied that he had any idea what happened to Mansel’s crewmen. “I told you and your detachment that we’d do anything to help.”
    “Have you heard of anything like this before?” Mansel asked, not totally buying the regent’s excuses and silver tongue.
    Postov shook his head. “No, no, never heard of it. Then again, we don’t have many visitors.”
   “I see why,” said Lieutenant Commander Fleury, still leaning against his console. Mansel shot him a “not now” look.
   “We are conducting own investigation now,” the regent said. “So far, all results are negative.”
   “And my away team?” Mansel asked. “How are they?”
   “They’re fine, Captain,” assured Postov. “Would you like to talk to them?”
   “No,” said Mansel. That’s quite alright. Good day regent.” The Captain ended the transmission.
    Vice Regent Tayavic stood to Postov’s left, just outside the screen. “Do you think he knows?”
    Regent Postov nodded his head. “I think he knows something, yes,” the Regent confided. “Monitor the detachment closely. Also, monitor who all they try to transport on and off the planet.” He leaned back. “We need these people.”

     The away team had been cruising along for a little over an hour in their stolen vehicle. Dawn was approaching; they had to move fast. They finally caught a break when Commander Vaughn noticed a gap in the mountains. “Head for that gap, Ames,” said Vaughn.
      Ames guided the quick little skipper for the gap. They reached it after ten minutes, slowing down with the windows partially down and carbines at the ready.
     What they saw both amazed and disgusted them.
     The whole saucer section of a starship—or at least what the UNSF would consider the saucer portion—had been hand built in an earth tone green, making it almost impossible to see from a cursory flyby. It was resting on the ground. Elsewhere, the bodywork commenced. Lastly, there was a third group the translight nacelles. This whole work area covered roughly double the size of California.
      And it was all being built by slave labor. People and aliens of all different races were working under the iron thumb of hundreds of Pallans, laboring to build the immense ship.
     Commander Vaughn pulled out his surface-to-ship communicator and activated it. “Captain,” he reported, “we’ve found the missing crewmembers—” That’s all he was able to say before the guards started firing on the skipper.

     At her console, Lieutenant Hardy caught the brief message. “Captain,” she reported to Mansel, who had returned to the bridge, “I just got a report from Commander Vaughn, but it was cut short.”
     “On speakers.”
     Commander Vaughn’s voice came to life over the speakers. “Captain, we’ve found the missing      crewmembers—”
     Lieutenant Hardy looked to Mansel. “That’s all, sir.”
     “Can you pinpoint its location?” Mansel asked.
     The crewman replacing Lieutenant Talaj made the location appear on the viewscreen.
    “Transporter room,” said Mansel, “beam the away team out of there.”
    “Not possible, sir,” said the transporter chief, David Miller. “There’s some kind of tachyon field around the planet. We can’t beam through the field without considerable damage.”
     Suggestions?” Mansel asked.
     Lieutenant Commander Fleury’s face appeared on the screen next to the transporter chief’s. “Captain, it’s possible to reverse the polarity of the deflector dish and send a particle beam powerful enough to disrupt the field. I might work for one, maybe two beam-outs.”
     “It’s worth a try,” said Mansel. “Do it.”