Shuttle pod. Quantum acts as a backseat driver to Mayberry. "Easy does it. There's a lot of debris out here," he says. Reed comments that not all the debris is from the Fortunate, and Phlox adds, "On the bright side, I'm only picking up inorganic material -- no bodies." Ouch. Reed reports that the main hatch is damaged: "No chance we'll get a positive seal." May-I-Know-It-All-Berry tells them, "There should be an auxiliary hatch on the port side." In outer space, the shuttle pod navigates through the burning debris -- um, how exactly is it STILL BURNING when fire needs OXYGEN to burn? -- and locks itself to the side of the Fortunate. The Enterprise crew strides aboard and is met by four of the glowering Fortunate crew. "Permission to come aboard," Quantum says. Rather late for that, since they're already aboard. "Granted," says young football-throwing guy, to whom they better give a name soon, because he's so nondescript that it's getting hard to come up with identifiers. "I'm Matthew Ryan, First Officer," says nondescript-but-now-named young football-throwing guy. Quantum introduces himself and says, "Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances. What happened here?" "Nausicaans," Ryan tells him. "They tried to board us. We managed to fight them off but not before we took a few bruises." "Nausicaans?" Quantum queries. "Pirates, sir," Mayberry fills in for him, chomping at the bit to impress the crew of the Fortunate with the fact that he's a "boomer": "They've been attacking freighters in this sector for years. M'parents had a run-in with them once, they were lucky to come out of it alive." Maybe it's just me, but I would have thought that in order to become, and function as, a Starfleet Captain, you'd actually have to have some knowledge of what goes on in space. Especially if those goings-on affect other humans in space. I mean, how can a freighter crew going warp one-point-eight know more than the captain of a Galaxy-class starship whose main purpose is exploration? Ah, I'll only find the answers at the bottom of a Post Road. "Your parents ran freight?" Ryan asks. "Still do," Mayberry says, puffing up with pride, "An old J-Class -- the Horizon." Ryan looks at him with new respect, and Mayberry gives him a weird nod over Quantum's shoulder. "I've got repair teams standing by. What can we do?" Quantum asks. Ryan thanks-but-no-thanks him for his trouble. "If you didn't need our help, then why did you send out a distress call?" Reed asks. Ryan smiles creepily and says, "One of our younger crewmembers panicked -- hit the emergency beacon. With our comm down we had no way of telling Starfleet to ignore it." Quantum digests this and asks, "Where's your captain?" Ryan admits that Captain Keene was wounded, so he's in charge until Keene recovers. "I'm sorry we took valuable time away from your mission," Ryan says.