Captain Major Ty N'Desp had secrets.

Nothing profound to be sure, and nothing that would interfere with her duty as commanding officer of the USS LaGrange, but secrets nonetheless, and she enjoyed keeping them. There was something titilating about indulging private idiosyncrasies known to no one.

She felt a small flutter of guilt as she and Lieutenant Commander Chandler, her vessel's newly promoted Chief Security Officer; her aide at the moment, strode into the transporter room of Starbase 416, for her mission was of such importance that she should not be thinking of personal pleasures, The information she carried had been deemed too important to risk on subspace and had been passed from hand to hand from Federation Headquarters to be given to her in person. The security of the whole of The Federation could be at stake -- and yet the foremost thought on her mind was her anticipation of the next few moments.

"Well Lieutenant," she addressed the Caitian, "shall we do this?" Chandler was looking a little pale under the fur that dusted his face. Chandler, she knew, was not at all looking forward to the experience of transporting from Starbase to Starship; he found it altogether unpleasent, and, at times, made him a bit quesy. He suffered it stoically because as her aide there was no way to avoid the process, and after having garnered this dandy little assignment, he was not about to risk it because of a little nausea.

"Sure, Captain." He watched her take her place on the pad, then took his beside her. They made an odd pair -- the small, lithe, yet somehow regal Captain with her close cropped bowl haircut, and the larger, beefier lionesque, feral-looking young man -- but in fact, they had found that they got along better than anyone would have expected. Any closer and they would have regarded one another as part of the family. For her, for instance, Chandler was willing to tolerate his frailty regarding transporters.

"About set," she said to the transporter engineer, a seasoned veteran from the planet Cha'Ramm. He was remarkably fast at entering molecular codes because of the ten digits adorning each appendage.

"I am prepared, Captain. Please give me your command."

Ty smiled. The moment was here. It was all she had wanted all along; a crew, a mission, purpose, and people to share it with. What any Bith wanted, really. The secret was, she loved being transported. She knew that most found tit o produce no repsonse, physical, emotional, others, like Chandler, got quesy, became disoriented, and felt it constantly unpleasant.

For Ty, however, it was a transcendant experience. The conversion of her body into a subatomically disassociated stream of matter created a rapturous sensation; a mystical spiritual/sexual experience all wrapped up in one powerful phenomenon. Her consciousness remained intact during the transport, of course, and in that breathtaking instant of demaaterialization adn materialization, she felt herself brush against something more; some mysterious, powerful force that existed only in that time. She sometimes felt she was only a hair's width (if hair were to exist at that point) away from grasping it, from understanding the all, but then it was over and she arrived at her destination. Always, always, did she long for the next time.

"Proceed, Chief."

Chandler tensed beside her, and Ty closed her eyes, focusing on the intensity of the experience tht was about to come. A roaring sound in her ears signaled the beginning of the dematerialization process, and there was the brief, flashing swirl of light and then the sensation of swooping into a void, then blackness. A second, a fraction of a second -- how long was it? Forever? A majestic feeling overwhelmed her; was she soaring? Tumbling? Ascending? There it was, that unknowable something; she reached for it. Only a moment more, and she would touch it . . .

"Welcome back, Captain," Commander Selek said. "You are looking well as usual."

"Neat," she told him, turning to Chandler to make sure he had come through the tranport intact. The man was bend over, holding his midsection. "Are you alright? Sick," she said, reaching out to pat his back.

"N-n-no," he stammered. "You--"

"I what?" She asked.

"I felt that," he told her.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," he explained, "I hate transporting more than anything, but you seem to enjoy it, so I slipped into your mind for a moment -- just in the background," he assured her. "But when you beam across, I din't know that . . . excuse me, I need to change," he finished succinctly.

Ty looked again; he had not been holding his midsection.

Selek cocked his head to one side, "Why," he asked with an air of absolute superiority, "was he holding his groin," the Vulcan asked.

Chandler headed at top speed toward his quarters; he knew he had to have been disoriented still, a bit from the transport, because something caught his eye that should never have been in the first place. Was that a Cardassian? In a Federation uniform? Uniform -- his had a little wet spot, he remembered, slipping into his quarters, the non-sight of a Cardassian in black-and-red slipping from his mind -- not enough to forget; just enoguh to not attempt to follow the man. Oh, he realized, there it is, as his usual transport relatec nausea kicked in. He fell over, clutching his stomach, curled into a ball. I am such a cub, he thought to himself.