Lieutenant Monique Dedmon paced around in her cabin before she took a deep breath to calm herself. She went over the reasons she had for being against Treecy de Santos being given any kind of access to the crew and the working areas of the Nemo or any other vessel in the squadron. On a personal level, she knew why she disliked the woman. Treecy de Santos was beautiful, sharp, strong, and talented. A walking, talking measuring stick that showed all of the areas Monique felt were flawed with herself. For the upcoming meeting, she needed to push all of her personal thoughts and feelings away and stick to the security reasons she had come up with. She closed her eyes straightened up her uniform one more time and calmly walked out of her cabin and headed to the conference room.

"Hey, Mo!" Lieutenant Kumiko Tachibana smiled as she walked into the room. Monique had a small crush on the shorter woman since they had met back in the officer's academy but she was professional enough to keep it to herself.

"Kumiko." She nodded at Kumiko and took her seat.

Colonel John and Zigs, Captain Peter Zigsankowski the engineer were the last two into the room. The Colonel looked everyone in the eyes and then placed his palms on the table and said in a steady voice, "Treecy de Santos asked to enlist with us. I have given the matter a lot of thought and I have come up with an idea. I would like to make her an acting ensign. It's a made-up position. As you know, Second Lieutenant is the lowest-ranking officer we have. I am going to have her assist each of you in turn until we can determine if she can make it as a real officer. Ok, now I want to hear why this is a bad idea." He looked right at Monique.

Monique noticed everyone was looking at her so she exhaled and then said, "We can't verify the authenticity of her background, knowledge, or origin. I can't be the only one here who thinks it's fishy that she just showed up as soon as we left jump space?" She looked around at all the faces of her colleagues and then went on, "She could be a spy or worse."

Colonel John nodded and then tapped his finger on the table, "Or she could be exactly what she says. Lieutenant Dedmon, which department would you assign her to that would be the least damaging to the squadron if she were to be what you think?"

Monique rubbed her eyes with her right hand, "Mine."

"Then it's settled, Lieutenant Dedmon you'll have acting ensign de Santos as your aide for the next cycle. Based on your eval we'll make a decision on promotion to Second Lieutenant and possible reassignment." Colonel John smiled and leaned back in his seat. "The next order of business, have we got anything new on the telescopes, Lieutenant Marsh?"

Randall Marsh rubbed his hand over his mustache and then cleared his throat, "Yes sir, as of this morning we found a planet in the Goldilox zone around the star we designated ZX-409. It looks to be exactly the kind of world we find stargates in."

Colonel John pumped his fist and the other officers around the table all looked relieved. Monique was the only one who made a face. Was she the only one here who wasn't crazy? If Treecy de Santos was right, getting back to Federation space was just as terrible as being lost in deep space.

After the meeting broke up Monique went to the quartermaster and got the acting ensign uniform and insignia made up and headed for Treecy's cabin. She paused at the door and then gave three gentle knocks. A smiling Treecy opened the door and beamed, "Hello, Lieutenant Dedmon!"

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Monique tried to keep her face blank, "de Santos." She stepped into Treecy's cabin and then said, "Colonel John has extended an offer to you. You can join as a probationary member of the squadron with the rank of acting ensign. You will be junior to all the officers but still, outrank the NCOs."

Treecy bounced around excitedly and squealed happily, "Oh my gosh that's amazeballs!" She looked at the uniform, "Are those for me?"

Monique handed the uniform and insignia over and before she could say a word Treecy started taking her clothes off and changing into the uniform. Monique stared opened mouthed as the perfect beauty changed. The image of a nude Treecy had forever burned itself into Monique's memory. After Treecy finished dressing she asked, "Who should I report to for my duty station?"

Monique blinked a few times and then cleared her throat, "Yes, so you will be working for and with me for the present time. Come with me and I'll bring you to my office. I am the chief security officer here on the Nemo but my duties include overseeing security for the entire squadron. Every vessel in the squadron has a security officer who reports to me. As for your duties, they will be delegated by me as I see fit. Your first duty will be to monitor the cameras and note down anything that looks unusual or could cause a security issue. for instance crew fighting, gambling, drinking on duty, smoking on duty, and sexual activities while on duty."

Monique tried to get through her own work while keeping her eyes on Treecy who looked at the video feeds while writing nonstop. Monique gave her the job as busy work since the AI already did that same job. At the end of the day, Monique took Treecy's report and compared it to the AI and found that Treecy's report aside from specific phrases was identical to the AI report. Treecy missed nothing.

Colonel John sat in the command seat of the Nemo next to the pilot the various display panels around him showed the tactical view of the squadron as they moved in formation toward system ZX-409. He leaned over and asked, "Hey Harv, what do you think of the new girl?"

Harvinder raised an eyebrow and then said, "She is a goddess. I don't mean that in the sense of her being attractive. She is obviously, but we come out of a five-thousand-year jump with no way to return to human space and she miraculously arrives with a gate interface at the very moment we discovered how badly we were screwed. On top of that, her body is perfect, her voice is perfect, her face is perfect, her mind is perfect... I don't know which god one of us prayed to have that girl delivered to us, but wow..." He whistled.

A girl sitting behind Harvinder to his left shook her head, "Captain Dhaliwal! We expect that kind of talk from Colonel John..." She facepalmed, "Don't drop down to his level."

Colonel John laughed loudly and patted Harv on the shoulder, "It's ok Harv, with a woman like miss de Santos even a Pope would be more than a little curious." He looked over something on one of his monitors and then muttered, "I wonder how Mo is getting along with her..."

Harv smiled and leaned closer to Colonel John, "I'm surprised you didn't try first."

Colonel John winked at him and gave a slight shrug, "The night is young." He reached over and touched one of his controls, "Destroyer Argo, you are out of position. Report."

A response came back almost immediately, "This is Argo, we are still having that issue with the thruster. Per Captain Cruz we'll need to get planetside and do a total rebuild."

"Copy that, Argo. Can you limp it into ZX-409?" Colonel John rubbed his temple.

"Affirm, Nemo, if possible we'll just need to avoid any maneuvers and make it as much of a straight shot as possible."

"Copy, we'll keep you at this heading and speed for the remainder of the trip until we have a need. Nemo out." Colonel John smirked and then looked at Harv, "I kind of wish we had the General and the rest of the group with us. Twenty destroyers is a pretty good force for a bombing run, but it sucks for colonizing a new sector of space."

Harv raised an eyebrow, "You don't think we'll find a gate?"

Colonel John raised his hands and shrugged, "I honestly have no idea what we'll find here, Harv. Miss de Santos finding us also means that we are farther away than even those amazing people have come after five thousand years. We might be further out than even the gate builders managed to get."

Harvinder looked down and nodded, "I think it's good to have the feeling the gate is there... Until it's not. You as squadron commander should prepare for the worst though." Harv gave Colonel John a hearty slap on the shoulder. "You know, If we find that gate and head to that girl's world we are going to be the ugliest men they have ever seen."

Colonel John chuckled, "Yeah, but chicks dig a man in uniform and they have never seen one, so we'll have a bunch of tens fighting over us."

The girl behind Harvinder started making barfing noises.