Overseer Biron read through the logs from the U.S.S. Lexington with a mixture of admiration and confusion.

The former came from Elizabeth Lense’s ingenuity in accomplishing her appointed task with no staff and limited equipment.

The latter came from that appointed task. In particular, the actions of Fiona Galloway filled him with utter confusion. Why would the Starfleet equivalent of a sub-overseer waste time and energy, and sacrifice her own life, just to preserve the lives of inferiors? It was an appalling misuse of resources. What did a mere engineer matter? Such people were easily replaceable. Someone who can perform the task of second-in-command of a ship—especially one as large as the U.S.S. Lexington— was a person for whom the preservation of life should have been a far greater priority.

Biron was unable to determine why Dr. Lense had been temporarily reassigned to the Federation starbase designated number 314 for a month’s time. He did, however, know that she specifically requested a transfer to the Starfleet Corps of Engineers after the war’s end.

Furthermore, he noted that she was the only doctor assigned to the U.S.S. da Vinci, aside from an upgraded version of the Emergency Medical Hologram that assisted her during the combat in the Setlik star system. The U.S.S. da Vinci was, after all, a much smaller ship than the U.S.S. Lexington, and did not require as extensive a medical staff.

He mentally stored these pieces of information along with the others he’d gleaned from his reading. Dr. Lense was a critical asset to the functioning of the vessel, given the obscene importance Starfleet placed on the lives of irrelevant life-forms. That was something Biron knew he could exploit.

Biron noted that several log entries were from the Federation starbase designated number 92. He soon realized that Bartholomew Faulwell, the language and cryptographic specialist assigned to the U.S.S. da Vinci’s Starfleet Corps of Engineers team, had been assigned there during the time period of the war. Confusingly, Faulwell appeared to be of Starfleet’s worker class, even though he obviously had the skills of an officer. I will never understand this Federation, he thought.

Faulwell had not been directly involved in either of Biron’s previous encounters with the U.S.S. da Vinci at either the Cardassian station Empok Nor or at the planet Maeglin. Therefore, Biron was unfamiliar with him. Apparently, he was stationed at this particular starbase during the war, and assigned to interpret and translate Dominion communication codes into something that could be read by the Federation.

That is a valuable skill, Biron thought, and began reading.