Scooby Doo Time...

[Angel Ryder]

Angelica looked at the map of the sector on her father's office wall and hummed. A slender finger tapping the zoom icon in the corner and pinching with her other hand to narrow in on a spot.

"This is where I heard there's some... shady something going on." Angel said as she looked at her sister and her father. "Liv clued me into it because it had a familiar signature but nothing either of us have been able to come up with has given us any answer other than 'shady'."

"So what's familiar about it?" Nick inquired as he looked at the map.

"The pattern of ships going in and out, it's almost S31 like but... not. Both of our contacts with 31 are at a loss. None of the ships match anything in their databases and I even talked to the big guy. He says to call him when you're free. He misses his weekly bullshit sessions with you." Angel said with a smirk. "So I wonder if this has anything to do with what we've been experiencing around Earth."

"Does seem similarily fishy." Nick agreed and sighed as he sat down and finished his iced coffee in one long chug. "Alright so we have our first investigation. I know you want to break out your new ship, but we have something else better suited for that. Remember when you and I were collaborating on that new AI powered fighter that Marcus made fools out of us with? Well... Tony and I have spent the past year or so updating it." he tapped a control on his desk and model of a stealth fighter and a female avatar appeared in mid air. "I call it the Iris system. Independent Research and Intelligence System."

"Catchy." Angel deadpanned and spun the model of the ship around. "Nice weapon layout, solves that arc problem we had on the previous model and I like the vectored engine array." she hummed. "So send a drone to get recon?"

"Better than a drone, she'll be able to cloak and camoflauge herself, then tap into one of the ships and infiltrate and gather intel." Nick said with a grin.

"So a real spy plane... does it transform too?" Olivia teased and smirked as she looked at the avatar. "Based it on us didn't you?"

"Call me biased." Nick said softly.

"Hello Biased I'm Olivia." she said with a slight giggle and tapped her finger on the desk. "All seriousness, if this IS 31, they're gonna know."

"They won't." Angel squinted as she looked at the prelim scans of the ships. "Because 31 doesn't use ships that are 30 years old, even the guys we worked with didn't. Everything was always ahead of our's because that gave them their edge."

"Unless they aren't OUR S31." Nick mused as he stroked his chin. "I'll be honest, there's been some funky dimensional rift activity the past few years, kept it sort of covered up because a) who wants to mess with their own alternate? b) if someone got curious there's no guarantee they could find their way back and c) no clue if it leads to one dimension or several."

"But that... would explain things." Olivia looked at her glass. "About a year ago, I... sanctioned a rogue Captain, he was feeding Starfleet secrets to the Orions to secure a 'retirement' plan for himself, but after I had taken his head. I encountered him four months later, alive, well and returned from a mission to the Delta Quadrant borders. He'd been on assignment for 3 years prior. No one really knew about this assignment until I found out that the President of the Federation gave it to him as a sort of hush hush op to see the viability of getting UFP ownership of some of the border colonies in the Delta Quadrant to allow us entre to the rest of the sector."

"So... you took out his doppleganger?" Angel paced as she thought for a moment, "So you think he may have come from another reality?"

"Only real explaination yet what I don't understand is why his duplicate was able to operate so freely and had access to everything he had. And why he was worried about a retirement plan..." Olivia said and crossed her arms. "I left Intel not long after all that, I was getting too much push back and... I feared for my children's lives."

"We would have protected them." Nick said firmly.

"Dad, they sent me Lana's earrings that she only takes off when she's in the gym and Vin's ring that he wore every day since he turned 13 that his father gave him with a piece of the Riddic family land inside." she closed her eyes. "They wanted me to know they could get to them anywhere. So I flirted with a section chief, got myself fired and let them think I was burnt."