She remembered hoping the transporter didn't put her molecules back together the right way. That maybe it would get caught in some space/time anomaly and instead of showing up on the USS Orion, on this day, she'd show up...a day earlier. A week earlier. A war earlier. Whenever just so long as it wasn't today, and her father was still alive. That's all she wanted. That's all she hoped for, as she waited for the Orion's transporters to reach out, identify, and deconstruct her. Call it a last prayer for this exact version of her, molecularly speaking. 

It was a prayer that, like all other prayers before it in her life, went unanswered--her eyes opened and there she was. Standing on the transporter pad, numb, hurt, and desperately losing herself in every ounce of Vulcan logic and the proper channeling of emotions. She hadn't shown up at Starfleet Command in uniform, and so she wasn't in it now: she wore light gray slacks that were low waisted and tight fitting, the top was Vulcan sand silk and likewise light gray with a shimmer of sparkle when in direct light, cut sleeveless and with a neck that tumbled. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in tumbles that shined with softness almost as much as the sand silk. 

When she stepped off and transporter officer stood to greet her, she heard the Vulcan respond with a simple, detatched, "Ensign." Everyone else along the way to the bridge simply got nods. Even when the turbolift doors hissed and the bridge opened up before her, she felt little and less. She had been on the bridge just hours before the meeting at Command interrupted her originally planned meeting. But somehow those hours had become lifetimes. 

At least, a single lifetime. Her father's.

FIB was waiting for her outside Starfleet Command, to tell her what very little they could tell her. They knew where she was; they knew where the Orion was. The two were not separate--where she was, the Orion was, where the Orion was, she was. It had been that way since the very day she was named it's Commanding Officer. She found herself stepping onto the bridge in grey high heeled boots that were noiseless on the soft floor of the bridge, suddenly glad of the Orion and it's mission in a brand new way.

Vulcan was where she had to go. For the Orion and it's mission, and now, for personal reasons. Void as her outward image was of any visible hint of emotion, there was the barest, slightest, hint of a tone when she finally spoke, approaching the command chair: "Get us going, CONN." A hint of determination, and maybe if you listened hard enough, a hint of darkness. 

The V'Shar had the answers she needed. They would give them to her. Or else. She could do so within the bounds of her duty to the Orion, she was certain of it. Even if that meant furiously working the private comm channels--and no one had better access to external communications than Captain Vaella. Let alone the tall task of even trying to decrypt her ingoing and outgoing private comms even if you did want to peek. She was a tech whiz combined with Intelligence training and experience; best of luck. 

The only security weakness there was the person she corresponded with, and Charlie was a better bet for a secure encryption than even she was. The nerd. The message she had sent was simple, it was text, and it was three characters:

[i][b]SOS[/b][/i]

When the XO moved to lift himself from her seat, she lifted her hand, palm out. "I need to change. Alert me if anything happens. Keep a sharp eye on all sensor readings." [i]There is no safe space.[/i] There hadn't been since the start of the war. San Francisco had done a beautiful job getting itself up and running after the Breen attack, but it was still hurting. Inside, and out. 

She could relate with one of those. Without another word she turned on her heel and made for her Ready Room. Inside was her uniform, laid out on the couch. On the desk was her console--and it was blinking.