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Added New Talax mission, as well as a couple of subplots that surrounded that time
As Artemis returned to Federation Space proper, Benjamin took the opportunity to meet with Iris again. He met her new husband and child, and they were able to finally put some of their history behind them. Iris admitted she had been wrong about him, and he admitted that they were wrong for each other in the first place. It was a painful meeting, especially to see how battered and bruised Iris was from her time in Harkens' clutches, but by the end of it Benjamin was able to put her behind him properly for the first time since she kicked him out nearly a decade previously.
Following a moment of R&R - and debriefs by Star Fleet Security regarding the infiltration by Syndicate members - Benjamin fulfilled a final duty. While he hadn’t known L’Haan personally, he had felt compelled to return her belongings to her family on Vulcan. He had been the last to see her alive, and somehow he felt he owed it to the woman to do so. The trip was educational, though he felt saddened at seeing the family. They were a long line of security officers, and the fact that their daughter had become an engineer - despite serving faithfully and honorably - had led to their estrangement, a distance that her death had now made permanent. He took the lesson from this and made a point to contact his family, trying to do better than he had in the years previous.
===Pathfinder===
This proved fortuitous, as the Artemis’ new assignment was to the [[Pathfinder Project]] - a collection of advanced, slipstream capable ships being sent to the Delta Quadrant. Even more surprising to him was the fact that Captain Crawford promoted him to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) and assigned him as her chief engineer. It was a weighty responsibility, and one he wasn’t entirely sure he was worthy of, but he accepted gratefully.
While the public goal was to locate Voyager after all of these years, he knew that the idea to locate the Borg after the disaster of the Battle of the Megasphere had to provide at least some of the impetus to get this project launched now. He couldn’t help but feel like he still needed to help rectify some of his failings back when the Megasphere had just been a Rogue Planet, a feeling that surely drove some of his need to stay aboard.
After fleet maneuvers, to help coordinate the slipstreams for the eight ships in the fleet, the crews embarked on the month-long journey to reach the Talaxian colony that was the last point Voyager was in contact with Star Fleet Command. Near the end of the journey, the ships encountered a tachyon field that encompassed all eight ships. While Benjamin and his team struggled to keep the slipstream generator working, mishaps with other ships destabilized the stream, and eventually the Artemis fell out of slipstream just like all the other ships. Fortunately, Artemis was able to stay with several of the other ships, and together they started to try and make repairs and locate their fellows.
Before they could do much more than damage control, however, they encountered the [[Kazon]], who were attacking a [[Talaxian]] ship. Artemis came to their rescue, driving off the Kazon without a fight, and the Pathfinder ships were taken to their asteroid colony as guests. Once there, they discovered that the Talaxians were preparing to move to a nearby planet, but their ships were all but defenseless.
Benjamin was part of the team sent to the asteroid to assist them, and was ordered to begin making sure their ramshackle fleet was at least spaceworthy. In pursuit of that task, he found one locked down from the inside. Afraid of Kazon infiltrators, Benjamin was joined by a security detail, who discovered it was actually a Talaxian inside, but who refused to allow entry. Fearful of leaving the asteroid - the only home the youth had ever known - he had planned to sabotage one of the ships, but was caught by the Star Fleet team before he could do much. Timely intervention from the USS Luna helped to defuse the situation, and soon the Talaxians were able to leave and head to New Talax.
Benjamin and the rest of Pathfinder’s engineers worked overtime, first finding and repairing the rest of the fleet (though [[USS Callisto, RSV-88001|Callisto]] was damaged extensively enough to warrant returning to the Alpha Quadrant), and then helping to make the New Talax colony viable. The job left the Pathfinder mission stuck in orbit of New Talax for several months, enough so that they celebrated a number of year-end holidays there. Benjamin tried to participate - notably helping Nathan with his costume for Halloween by building a shotgun-ax - but was so tired most of the time that he could do little more than show up.
During this time, he did find a moment to work on the two Archangel runabouts, helping Commander Braggins rectify a few flaws that had come out in production as opposed to the prototype she had originally helped build. He gathered a bit more insight into the smaller craft, learned a little about Jenny and himself, as well as came up with a few ideas for improvements to the runabouts of his own, though they have yet to be finalized for presentation, much less implemented. He did also carve out some time for his friends, though not as much as he would have liked - or that the counselor thought was healthy - but the biggest relief came when the Artemis embarked on her next mission.
|Majors= Engineering
