||Briefing Room
||Starbase 12
||February 12, 2388
||1000
Shuffling his feet, he moved to the head of the table in the briefing room. He had summoned his senior staff via communicator and expected them to start to come in at any time. Gan liked to be to meetings early, but the urgency had left him with a lot to do before he could get here, so he was just on time. Surprisingly, his chief of security hadn't beat him here yet. She was probably organizing something or chewing someone out. He shrugged his shoulders, everyone would get here in their own due time, or he would pull them to this room by the ear. He laughed at that mental image, dragging his senior staff members along the floor. He shook his head, well at least this would be an opportunity to see Marlo, if only for a few minutes. That would certainly be nice. He placed PADDs at the individual chairs with the mission briefing on them. Max had collected enough data on where the away team would be going, and he still figured on volunteering to lead the mission. He pondered if Marlo would join him, that could be fun. It could be like shore leave, but working at the same time. He chuckled and sat down, reading the briefing over once more.
He drummed his fingers on the table as he read, humming under his breath. It seemed like they had just been able to catch their breath and they were called out again on another mission. And this would be a hefty one, not just rescuing a stranded ship or the like. A world had come under attack. He shook his head, sighing softly. He hoped for the sake of the people that not too many were casualties. That certainly made things much harder. He looked up to the doors, waiting for the rest to arrive.
Max stalked into the briefing room then, brooding over a PADD. The whole mission was already filling him with trepidation. He tried to remind himself that they were a response base, and their primary task was assisting colonies like this, but his experiences in the past made him wary. At least he felt he could channel that wariness into caution, something he had been lacking last time, when delusions of grandeur and dreams of another rank pip had pushed him to volunteer for a dangerous away mission. This time he would let the Captain decide on who went gallivanting off to rescue the colonists, and this time as far as Max was concerned they could send in the Marines first to make the area secure for more valuable officers like him.
He looked up to see Gan already seated in the room, and with a nod of greeting he made his way over to stand before the man. "Good morning Captain. I hope you've been able to review the intel we gathered. It's a bit sketchy at this point I'm afraid, but we do know there's been an attack of some kind. The distress signal is unclear on who, but…" he paused to check his PADD one more time.
"Starfleet monitoring probes in the area did record an unusual vessel entering the area," Max said proudly, having ordered increased deployment of probes after the previous mission's intel problems and glad that it had paid off. He slid the PADD across the table to Gan, the screen displaying a low-quality image of the vessel. "My team has identified it as a Kolti-class freighter, but…heavily modified." He put emphasis on that, and left it to Gan to read the meaning in the analysis of the freighter; it of course meant heavily armed.
"I think we've found our attackers, sir."
