<<Stardate: 47307.16- 13:30>>

<<Main Engineering>>

Lt. Kaitlyn Brennan whirled in surprise as a half dozen Operations officers swarmed into Engineering, led by the imposing Lt. Comm. Hunt. From opposite his entrance, another pair of Ops personnel that she hadn't even seen stepped up to the pale-skinned man.

"Report, Nazgur."

The man called Nazgur replied. "Because of the half-life of thoron radiation, we are able to run a fairly accurate trace. However, the target is moving in such a chaotic and random fashion, we're going to have to crawl through all the `Tubes' if we want to finally nab him."

Corvette Hunt nodded once. "Make it happen, people. I want all the Jeffries Tube hatches popped now, and a want a pair of officers in each access. Morliana, you're with me."

Kait Brennan could barely contain her anger, but most were reluctant to stand in the way of the swift and determined officers. The Klingon, K'tel, stood belligerently in the way of one hatch. The Ops officer who approached him gave him a challenging glare. But before a confrontation could even begin, En. Robert Delagi diffused it. "En. K'tel. Let the men do their jobs."

A second later, Delagi saw Lt. Brennan and fell silent. He was no longer in charge of Engineering.

A few seconds later, Engineering returned to a state of relative calm as all the Ops officers disappeared into the walls, clambering through the Jeffries Tubes.

From the way they had surrounded the most recent readings of thoron radiation, and with the assistance of internal sensors deleting the ops officers themselves from the scans, Corvette Hunts team of `black bag accountants', as Lt. Logan Castle had been overheard referring to them, had quickly and efficiently closed the dragnet until they were physically less than seven meters from one another.

Like the `Hunts' of Ghengis Khan, the Ops officers met almost simultaneously at a junction of Tubes. There was only one other place for their quarry to go. Straight down. And, it was a dead end.

With silent caution, Hunt ordered Nazgur and Morliana into the `hole'. They dropped in, Nazgur first, and disappeared into darkness.

"Are you kidding me?", Morliana's voice floated up to the remaining six.

"Report.", Hunt ordered.

Seconds later, Morliana climbed out of the hole shaking her head.

She was followed by Nazgur, who had an irritated smile on his face. Then, Nazgur pulled something from the hole below and showed it to the rest of them.

It was a long-bodied rodent. A ferret. And strapped to its back like a rocket, was a thoron imaging device.

"Damn.", Hunt sighed. "A decoy."

At that moment, the Red Alert claxon sounded.