A Running Tab

The Dutchman is barely back on her feet after the Borg mission when an old contact of Zedd's shows up unannounced at their next port stop with information he says could not wait. The Black Nebula and the Crimson Corsairs have started asking questions about a former associate who walked away from both of them without permission and without paying what he owed. They do not have a location yet but they are getting closer and the contact is not entirely sure which side sent him to deliver the warning.

For the first time the crew gets a real look at what Zedd left behind when he built the Dutchman. The debts, the factions, the dataport that still carries the fingerprints of the people who paid for it, and the fact that disappearing cleanly turned out to be harder than he planned for. They are a crew of weeks, not years, and some of them are still figuring out what signing on to the Dutchman actually means when the thing asking that question is not a difficult cargo run but two of the Gamma Quadrant's more dangerous organizations deciding whether their captain is worth finding.

They have options but none of them are clean. Run and buy time which solves nothing and eventually runs out. Go looking for whoever is doing the asking and try to make the problem stop before it starts. Or find a way to settle the debt once and for all and close the door on that part of Zedd's life permanently. Whatever they choose they are choosing it together now because the crew knows and there is no putting that back.