Once they had done a quick tour of Engineering, the Commander took the three of them to several other important areas of the ship, the visit to sickbay was short, as the medical staff weren't on shift yet, there were just a couple of orderlies standing in. The Brig was again quick, a brief introduction to the Ensign on duty, Carnis guessed the chief was either off duty or on the bridge, likely along with most of the rest of the command staff (OOC: hint hint :p) Their quarters were pointed out as they passed them. Before long, they entered another turbolift and made their way to the last stop on the tour, the bridge. The doors opened onto the nerve centre of the ship, and they were greeted with an Ensign verbally tackling a civilian.

"I'm sorry Sir, but no civilians are allowed on the bridge, whether you helped build the ship or not." The security ensign said, with a little more force than was necessary.

"But there are some jobs in the Ready Room that need finishing yet." The civilian pleaded.

"I'm sorry, but the ship has become an operational vessel now, even if it is still in Spacedock, if there are any jobs that need finishing, they will be completed by the engineering department."

The discussion went on for a while as the Carnis looked around the bridge, it was definitely designed with the ship's tactical role in mind, there seemed to be two tactical stations, and the layout was such that from his seat he could see all the necessary combat stations unobstructed. It wasn't designed in the way of the cruiser bridges either, it was harsher, in a metallic scheme, and yet, he felt at home here. Maybe it was his tactical training, but it suited the style of the ship, and yet it seemed like it could be lived with. He turned his attention back to the two men that were arguing.

"Excuse me sir, what is your name?" He asked the civilian imperiously.

"Uh, Michael Sanders." The man turned to face him.

"Michael Sanders? And what do you do here at the shipyards?" Behind the civilian, the Ensign had seemed to relax, looking relieved that someone had taken the burden off him.

"I'm do the finishing touches, the uh décor I suppose."

"Interesting, I was under the impression that all the finishing touches had been done before the crew were allowed onboard Mr. Cable." This wasn't the first time the two of them had met, though clearly the man didn't remember him.

"Wh-What? Who's Mr. Cable?" The man replied, glancing furtively around.

"You are Mr. Cable, freelance journalist. I don't know how you got onboard my ship, or how you even knew it existed, but you have no business here, and you are in violation of far too many laws for me to state. Ensign, please escort this man to the Brig and tell your chief to contact the shipyards about him, I'm sure they'll be very interested in him."

"Yes Sir." The Ensign replied, pulling out his phaser, with a small smile of satisfaction crossing his face briefly. "This way please." He said to the journalist, guiding him off the bridge.

"Captain, if you don't mind me asking, how did you know who he was?" The Commander asked.

"He used the exact same story last time we met, during the refit of one of the vessels I served on, clearly he didn't pay much attention to a lowly tactical officer back then. I wonder what he was after, just a story or something more?" He mulled this over as he settled into the Captain's chair, he didn't even realise that he hadn't cast his eye over the staff on the bridge.

As Carnis sat mulling things over, the science officer on duty said, "Sir. I'm picking up some sort of transmission from within the sector, it's not using federation codes."

"What? Is it civilian?" Carnis asked, wondering if the reporter had managed to get something out on his way to the brig.

"Negative, it's definitely a military encryption, it looks . . . Romulan." The ensign looked around in horror.

"Block it if you can, and try to decrypt it. Hail the shipyard, they've got a spy somewhere." He said with authority, back in his element of commanding a starship. They may not be flying, but it was an operational vessel in every other sence of the word.

"Aye sir." Came the reply from the Science station, quickly followed by a young female voice saying, "Hailing frequencies open Captain, Admiral Ark'Vor responding."

"On screen." The viewscreen flickered into life, showing a hectic scene, "I would guess you picked up the signal Admiral."

"Indeed we did Captain, we're trying to pinpoint the transmission location now, but half our sensors are offline for a routine diagnostic, they knew when to send the signal. Any luck your end?"

"No sir, I've got science working on it now, we're trying to decrypt it as well."

"Very good, let me know if you get anything." The screen blinked back to the external view again.

"Anything on the decryption Ensign?" He asked.

"No sir, it's top level encryption, I can't even get close to it, the chief might be able to help you, I hear she's pretty good." Carnis nodded, tapping the ship-wide button.

"Chief Science Officer please report to the bridge immediately." He shut the intercom down, "Keep working on the signal trace Ensign."

"Aye sir, the block appears to be working sir."

"Good, monitor it, let me know how much may have gotten through if you manage to decrypt it." So much for a quiet start to life on his new command, still, it was good to be back in charge of a crew.

"First, what's your name, second we've intercepted an encrypted transmission from this system, top level romulans military encryption, your ensign can fill you in. We think we're blocking it, and we're working on pinpointing the origin." Carnis replied, recovering from seeing the woman in front of him, she didn't seem to be a particularly regulation conscious officer.

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Elsewhere on the ship, the journalist had recently activated an implanted subspace transmitter, the switch was in the roof of his mouth, no-one would have noticed him activate it. His mission was complete, if Starfleet were able to jam it, it wouldn't matter, the important parts were transmitted in a micro data burst at the start, the rest was mainly as a distraction to keep them off the micro burst. He wondered if he would escape this alive . . .

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Hidden near a gasgiant, a Romulan fleet waited, waiting for the transmission from their spy. Within minutes of it arriving, the last ship had achieved warpspeed . . .

La'Piri continued to walk down the corridors, jabbing the device into the unsuspecting passenger's necks, watching them freak out. She would blink and walk off every time they stared at her, looking quite shocked and confused. Human emotions puzzled her sometimes. She eventually made it onto the bridge and injected the vaccine into the linguist's neck and looked at the device; it was empty. She retrieved a new one and hit the pilot on the neck gently, "If you feel a bit of swelling on your third toe, don't be alarmed, it's normal." She stepped up to the science officer and jabbed her arm with the syringe and then moved to the captain where she repeated the procedure, "Captain, I'll be done with the vaccines by take off. If your clavicle begins to feel sour, or even... "Squishy" as you humans would say, don't be alarmed, it's normal, healthy, even." Continuing on, she didn't stop as people glared at her or gave her odd looks, or yelped as the vaccines took effect. Sometimes the vaccines could be bloody awful, but these were for normal everyday viruses that wouldn't do much harm.

"Vera Holmes," Third declared, and grinned, saved by the bell as the doors behind her opened again, and a vulcan stepped inside, beginning to talk to the Captain. Not long after she felt a sharp pain in her arm as the vulcan began injecting them all with syringes. She muttered a small "ow", but saw this as a chance to sneak off, quickly placing herself by the ensign. "So? What're we looking at?" she asked brightly. The ensign explained the situation in short terms, and his approach to decrypt the signal. It was easy to tell where he had gone wrong. "Oh, one of the tricky ones," the Q was unable to maintain anything but the slightly joking personality inherited by her ancestors as she began working, a lot faster than one would expect. Though not entirely sure about social situations and the like, she had not become COS for cracking jokes at appropriate, and sometimes inappropriate, times.

Ingus was simply sitting in his seat, with nothing to do but watch as this little drama was unfolding before him. It was a little confusing, but it seemed the Chief Medical Officer had a few issues with efficiency versus social etiquette. She was about to inject him with the syringe when the Captain chastised her for it. He was a bit relieved to be honest. The Chief of Science, another woman he didn't recognize, came in and quickly took her station. A real busy body, ain't she? She began working on decrypting the mysterious signal no one knows came from, all the while, the captain was talking to security.

"A real busy place isn't it?" He thought aloud, continuing to indulge in this little drama scene.

It was quite the sight, at least for people that already knew her, to see Third work. Most people new Vera Holmes as an eccentric, perhaps even borderline insane young woman, and to see her without the constantly amused face she usually carried, as if about to make a humoured comment about any situation was fascinating. Especially since the change was sudden, almost without reason. One could see her eyes darting back and forth, quickly processing and reading information, her hands moving accordingly to decrypt the transmission efficiently. Her face was expressionless, a look of complete concentration, in most cases.

Today, however, she found herself slightly too interested in her surroundings, and it wasn't before ten minutes later she finally gave a triumphant cry of "Aha!", quickly followed by a thoughtful "Oy, wait a minute.. Captain, you should probably take a look at this as soon as possible.”

"Hard to say, hopefully not a lot of it got through," Third replied and nodded. "Will do, sir," before returning to her work, transferring her discovery to the station as ordered. She listened in on the message sent from the CMO and made a face of worry, glancing down to her arm where the Vulcan had stabbed her earlier. Muttering a small "oh, dear, that doesn't sound good," she began searching through the information she had decrypted in order to see if she'd missed anything earlier. She hummed a low tune, completely in her own world.

"Aye captain." Ingus replied. Take her for a quick spin? That wouldn't be much fun... The pilot thought to himself. "Alright, then let's see what this baby can do!" He started inputting commands into the console. "Warming up the warp core..." The ship's core began to run from a low hum to a high whirring sound. The console confirmed everything was ready. "Preparing for take off. Hangar bay is in standby."

The whole ship began to shake a little, as the ship began to slowly began to move. The ship was exiting the hangar bay slowly out into the open. "Here we go...the ship is now moving out. Impulse only." Ingus was impressed the ship handled very easily to his commands, and was a much smoother ride than many other ships he's piloted. The ship was now hanging in orbit around Utopia Planetia. Admittedly, the planet was beautiful from afar. "Any place you wanna take her cap'n?" Ingus called out. "If I wanted to, I could probably fly this thing through an asteroid field. Seriously, I wanna see how this thing can handle!"

A few minutes into the flight, Ingus begins to feel slightly groggy. His head felt light and his fingers tingled. Whoa... Ingus did his best to refocus himself. He made sure that he stayed awake. Especially since he was picking up some bad readings on his console.

"C-captain!" He said, fighting off unconsciousness. "I'm picking up readings on long range sensors. There's a fleet heading this w-way." He types in the console. "I'm pretty sure, it might be Romulan forces, sir." Ingus sways in his seat a bit, not sure what is going on with him. Whatever it was, he fights it as best he can, though his dizziness quickly begins to get worse.