| abstract | - A permanent change of crew has been made, shifting a great deal of Enterprise crewmen to permanent duty aboard the Admonitor to make up for the recent loss of life. Shield is in on the Bridge with the main crew, overseeing a list of the transferred crewmen. None of them, he notes, are Senior Officers. He says that this is fine, because he's quite okay with the current Senior Officer detail on his ship. He then receives a private message redirected to his personal quarters; he leaves in such a hurry that his comm-badge falls off his jacket as he rushes for the door. In his quarters, he receives the message. Captain Young has a daring new plan: drawing upon engineering specs that she claimed she came up with herself, she states that they could combine their warp cores, creating a double output field using the new S'srelli technology, which would allow their ships to travel at faster-than-warp-10 speeds. When he asks her what they could do with it, she suggests that they go to the Andromeda Galaxy, where she believes the S'srelli might dwell. Hopefully, they would consent to becoming allies of their little coalition, which she calls the New Insurrection. As the message ends, Shield begins to ponder what this could mean. As he continues thinking, he discovers that his comm-badge is missing. He walks over to the inter-comm on the wall and opens up a channel to the bridge, only to accidentally pick up the comm-badge's signal: it is on! But he accidentally comes upon the Senior Officers talking among themselves. He hears Loghri, Helsman Wilhelm Werner, and several others. They are discussing their plans for the mutiny, their mysterious third partner discusses that he had tapped into the private message, and he knows everything about their plans. He says that if the warp-pool plan fails, their mission might continue as planned: but if it succeeds, then they might be able to maroon Shield on some alien planet, and therefore not be technically guilty of killing him. They all hail him as their captain as they leave, none of them having discovered the comm-badge. Shield is in shock. The entire Senior Officer crew, which he has just lauded his preference for, has been against him. He decides to stay in his quarters, and only receive messages from Young. Any noise makes him fearful for some kind of trap or assassination attempt. As he tries to sleep, he's nervous and has unsettling nightmares of a man with a face like his father laughing at him, telling him that he will never be rid of him (this his father had once said to him after catching young Edward when he had tried to run away from home). Just as the vision ends, a Commander named Gerald Gradl enters into the room, his face appearing exactly where the face of Edward's father had been in the nightmare. With a disturbingly knowing look on his face, Commander Gradl tells Captain Shield that he dropped his comm-badge on the Bridge and gives it back to him. Shield takes the badge and, when the commander leaves, wonders if he was the ring leader of the mutiny he had overheard just minutes ago.
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