Simon looked at Stu’s credentials, he had been who Starfleet had chosen for this mission. The crew had already done a initial survey of the Thalor V surface with shuttles since Bakersfield was now in orbit around Thalor V. Simon decided to go to cetacean ops to check on his crewmember and also talk about the plan ahead for the mission that Starfleet had assigned them for Thalor V.

“Oh, Captain, nice to meet you.” Stu said

“Stu, nice to meet you too.” Simon said. He then pointed to the planet.

Simon then said “Ready to go and explore for Starfleet? We picked up a distress signal coming from within the ice, or possible below it. Your mission is to find out where it is and be careful.”

“Where it is sir? We can’t get a fix on the location from orbit?”

Simon replied “Not a precise fix. No. There is a large scattering field of ions and charged plasma surrounding the presumed crash site. We suspect this is from the effects of the crash itself.”

The Captain then typed in a few commands on a console and pulled up an image on the large wall display. Stu swam to the edge of pool nearest to the display and propped himself up on the edge of the pool deck and studied the image.

It was a magnified optical overhead image, what it showed was deep guage in a what was presumably a thin section of surface ice roughly a mile and half long that ended in a vaguely T-shaped depression, or was it a depression. Stu looked closer and thought again, no, that looked like a recent hole in the ice that was in the process of re-freezing.

“Any idea on who is sending the distress call sir?”

“That, we have a good idea of…” he tapped a few more commands on the console and the display changed to image of a Klingon ship.

“The IKS Azetbur, an older K’Vort class cruiser. She was on a cloaked patrol near this area of the Expanse when she suddenly went missing. The distress call matches the standard Klingon frequencies and language.” Simon replied.

“And you want me to, what? Beam down to the ocean and swim around with a tricorder and find the potential wreck?” Stu asked, half jokingly, not expecting his guess to be anywhere near the actual plan. He expected a shuttle modified for aquatic travel or some other form of back-up.

“In a nutshell.”

Stu asked a few more questions, and tried to prepare himself for the mission he was about to embark on.

Simon the headed to the bridge and looked upon the splendor of the white world that was dotted and streaked with blue highlights. He hadn’t often worked with or appreciated cetacean ops officer until now. Ironically, it was the need for a cold water climatized, aquatic officer and not Stu’s specialties or training that had showed him.