Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode 09: Rishan Pleasure Base #5

(Stardate 45378)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

It was stardate 99507.34 and that meant it was summer on the Planet Benson. I was out in the garden fighting with a piece of landscaping. Landscaping was not something that a ninety-five year old man needed to be doing, but I was tired of waiting for the contractors to bring power shovels out to do it.

I was grunting and straining with a large piece of rock. The anti-grav took away the weight, but not the inertia. I didn't have the thing quite dug out enough, but I was hoping that the rock could push through the dirt if I gave it enough momentum. It took a long time to get moving, and that gave me time to push a lot.

A shadow fell across me, and I stopped pushing and looked up. It was Katherine, my older daughter. This was all the excuse I needed to stop working. I stepped away from the boulder and climbed out of the pit I had dug next to it.

I looked at Katherine, and a weird sort of happiness bubbled up inside me. I was very proud of my oldest. She was slimmer than her mother and shorter. I saw her pale blue eyes and fine straight blonde hair. She was an adult now nearing her late thirties, I guessed. She was more fiery than her mother, too. Energy was her middle name.

I found myself grinning, and took her hand. We had adopted a more formal set of greetings and language when she entered Starfleet Academy, way back when I was still on active duty.

Then I noticed a fourth golden pip on her shoulder. Katherine had made captain.

"Well, Captain." I said.

"I came home to tell you." She said. She was solemn. Was she feeling the weight of her first command? I remembered the feeling. It had been forty six years since I had walked on board the USS Harrier, and I could still remember how nervous I had been.

It had been forty years since I had commanded the Harrier through that long desperate quest home. We weren't in great shape when we got home, but we did make it. There was something about that mission that was still bothering me after four decades. I couldn't put my finger on it. I knew by now that I probably never would. Once again, I put the nagging feeling out of my mind and concentrated on the present. As I got older, it was getting harder to do that, too.

"Mph." I said "They give you a ship, yet?"

"Yes, The Renegade."

I racked my brains, but five years of desk duty, followed by fifteen years of retirement had taken their toll. "Which one is that?"

"Nothing special, just a Nova class cruiser." She tried to sound casual, but I could almost see the stats and records flowing past her mind's eye.

"Don't knock it. The Novas are workhorses. They assign them everywhere." I reassured her, but Katherine didn't need more shop talk. besides, I felt dizzy and thirsty. My body was telling me to go sit down in the nice, cool house, put my feet up, and wrap my hands around a cool lemonade. My body had grown more demanding and loud as I had grown older. I didn't see any point in arguing with it.

My house was a bigger two story rambling affair, with all the signs of old people who had lived there forever. It had been twenty years. We went into the kitchen and grabbed some cool lemonade out of the replicator. It was a luxury I had refused to do without, although my true love felt that the artificial nature of the device was distasteful.

We went into the living room and I slowly lowered myself into my chair. I saw the concern in Katherine's eyes, and it irritated me. I wasn't crippled, dammit, I was just old. My joints resented sharp movements, and so it was more comfortable to move deliberately and with calculation.

"Have you talked to your mother, yet?" I asked, with a grouchy tone in my voice.

"She wasn't here, when I arrived, so I went looking for you."

Then I remembered. Someone had come up with a new revelation in microbiology, or genetics or organic chemistry or something. Sandra had put on her shining armor and had gone flying off on her steed to make sure the young squirt had crossed his T's and dotted his I's.

They were holding the conference at the University of Benson. Sandra was a published and retired professor with no tenure to sweat, so she routinely invaded the place and set them all on their ears. Many of the hidebound academics and stuffed shirts hated her. That's part of why she loved to go. Sandra was relentless in her insistence that the truth be the final arbiter of such matters.

I grinned and counted my lucky stars. Who knew who I would be without her?

"How about your sister?" I asked. I knew where Barbara was, roughly. She was on Earth, destroying the status quo with a relish to equal her mother's. Barbara was a performance artist, attempting to express her thoughts and emotions directly to other beings, by making music, or telling stories, or painting pictures in front of them. There was no audience at a performance of Barbara's, there were only hapless participants. I had been drug into a couple of these events, and Barbara hated it. My career had been composed mostly of nodding as though I had understood what was going on and then acting as though it were all under control until I figured out what was what.

Barbara said I ruined the groove on her performances. The truth is, my reactions to weirdness was practiced enough so that the other participants thought I had an idea and sort of gravitated to me.

Instead I bought the highly prized bootleg holodeck recordings of her performances and watched from a comfortable distance. Barbara would probably say something like the distance between the art and the participant was too great and that's what her troupe was all about.

"I missed her in Los Angeles." Katherine said "The whole performance moved to Mount Fuji and I couldn't wait."

"Better luck next time." I said. Rats, the recording would be incomplete.

We chatted a little more. Thirty years separated our careers in Starfleet, so there weren't to many common acquaintances for us to talk about. "How's Admiral Spaat?" I asked.

Katherine thought about it. "I haven't seen him in four years. Last I heard he was still commanding Starbase 1245." Spaat had been Katherine's first Captain. He was far too Vulcan to ever let our acquaintance color his reaction to Katherine, but I noticed that he had pushed her rather hard. This gave her the record she needed to make the fast track to Captain. Spaat had been her mentor. Never let a word of favoritism pass your lips, he made her earn it.

"Oh. Did you see Boothby while you were on Earth?"

"Yes. He is still puttering in the flower beds and growling at the cadets. He did remember me, though. Gave me a flower and made me promise not to tell anyone." Boothby was the El-Aurian gardener. For seventy years or more he had been watching the cadets at Starfleet Academy come and go, grouching at us and dropping just the right words when we needed to hear them.

Suddenly I was on the floor. It was cold and I hurt. "Katherine?" I called. It came out a whisper. She was right beside me, calling into her comm-badge.

"Medical Emergency! Medical Emergency, Reserve Center Please respond!"

"Starfleet Reserve Center, Benson, Please state the nature of the Medical Emergency."

"Man down, unknown cause..." She was telling them the basics, and stopped making sense. I drifted away...

I was still cold and hurt, but for some reason I was happy. I looked up and I was in Sandra's lap. That's why I was happy. What could be wrong there? "Hey..." I said

"Be quiet, They'll be here in a minute." She stroked the side of my head. I could almost relax, except I knew that there was something desperately wrong with me.

"Who? Who's here?" I managed

She just said "Ssshhh..." and kept hold of me. I always knew that she would. A moment of clarity swept over me, and I knew that the end was near.

"Listen." I said I tried hard and put a little steel in my voice. "You have to know. I love you. Remember that."

"I love you, too." She said. I could see that she understood what I meant. I saw pain in her eyes. I hated that. I would have given anything to take her pain away, except that I didn't have anything more to give.

My head throbbed brokenly. I tried to say more, but my words, and then my body failed.

I floated serenely in nothingness for a few moments and then I saw a bright light. It enveloped me...

-*-

I looked around, shocked. The after life looked just like the bridge of my first starship the USS Harrier. The nagging feeling I had carried around for more that forty years came back to me with a vengeance. The Harrier had been cruising through space more than a thousand light years from the Federation. We had been losing crewmen to an unknown long range transporter, and we had never resolved the problem.

Somehow I had gone on with my life for another forty years, never clearly remembering this.

There were all my old friends from the Harrier, and they looked just like I remembered them from that time. It was hard to tell with Li'ira, the Green Orions don't age externally the same way as humans do. There was Harksain Varupuchu I hadn't seen him look so fleshy in years.

If they looked just like the good old days on the Harrier, so did I. I had regained a lot of weight and my hands weren't nearly as spindly as I was used to.

"What, what.." I managed.

A flash and scream interrupted my thoughts I turned to see Flagg rolling across the deck. "NOOOoooo!" he screamed.

I hadn't seen Flagg since the end of the Harrier's voyage. I hadn't even thought that the nutcase was still alive. I was having one hell of a hallucination.

"I don't believe it! This is some sort of Obsidian Order trick!" Flagg rolled to his feet and crouched with a snarl.

I saw Stephanie Anderson pull a phaser out from under her tactical station and check the setting.

Flagg noticed this , but focused on me. "Hailey! You must be joking. I know he's dead! I killed him myself. I'll show you."

My new body was some what faster than I was used to, but I was never a match for Flagg. Fortunately, I could scuttle away from him long enough for Stephanie to stun him.

My brains started to turn over at this point. "I'm back on the Harrier!" I said, with awe.

"Are you all right, Captain?" Li'ira said to me.

I looked at her, swaying slightly. Anything I said at this point could alter the future, but I was sort of stuck. "Some sort of time warp?" I wondered.

A face appeared on the screen. He looked bright, chipper and slightly familiar. "And did you enjoy your experience, Captain Hailey of the Harrier?" He asked in a perky salesman's voice.

"My what?" I was confused...

"Your virtual lifetime! We offer the finest in detail and virtual experience. We pride ourselves in the fidelity of our creations."

Katherine, Barbara, Sandra, my whole life? NO!

"Ah, err..." I said.

"Thank you for waiting. Our systems have cycled again and it's time for our next group of customers to enjoy their virtual lives." The perky man on the screen said. With a flash Varupuchu, Spaat, Stephanie and Li'ira disappeared.

"I'm Chief Sub-Altern Lieutenant Carubo. Call if you have any questions, and thank you for choosing Rishan Pleasure Base Number Five for your virtual experiences."

-*-

I had a few days to adjust to the concept. I wandered the Harrier trying to keep the crew together. I wasn't easy. Most of the crew had seen themselves live through long and successful careers and then retire. We all had the delusions that we were retired admirals, statesmen and captains of industry. A shipload of chiefs and no damned Indians.

Most of the crew I spoke to understood and were willing to do their best on a good sportsmanship level, but there were a thousand subconscious differences between a crewman and an admiral good naturedly playing crewman. Morale and crew efficiency began to plummet.

The Harrier was sick ship. I began to doubt that we would be able to make it home. Making it home was essential to me.

Then some young snot who hadn't been through his virtual lifetime yet reminded me of the standing orders I had made forty years ago, back when I hadn't understood what the first few "Customers" of Rishan Pleasure Base Number Five were saying. The experience must be recorded. It must be described in detail for later analysis and examination.

-*-

I couldn't do it all at once. I began with my life following the Harrier's return to the Federation. It sounded like a pleasant daydream until I got to Sandra. The more I remembered our times together, the more I realized what a gaping hole I was. Without my true love I was not a whole person.

It felt as though she had died, or was suddenly taken away. I caught myself writing to her as I had thirty years ago during my previous deep space command.

She wasn't there. She never had been. Now I was alone, and I felt it like I never had before.

-*-

Talking about Katherine and Barbara was worse. Their whole lives were gone. Soon I was in tears and unable to continue.

-*-

In a few days of this, the Harrier was beyond being a wreck. Most of the crew was in a state of deep shock or mourning. We couldn't have made the Harrier cross five light years in that state.

In the engineering compartment, things were even worse. Most of the Engineers had experienced forty or more years of technological advance. They were frustrated to be working on such a relic as the Harrier. She was more than a century out of date in many ways.

We were essentially doomed, and I didn't know what to do about it.

-*-

"Are we ready?"

A chorus of "Aye, Captains." from the bridge crew answered me. The Harrier was as ready for space as we were going to get.

"Set course for-" I was interrupted by the salesman, again filling the main view screen.

"Why, you're not planning on leaving, yet, are you?" He said, surprised.

"Yes, we are." I said. I wanted to blast Carubo for what he had done to me. But there was no point. Even our sensors could tell that he was just an artificial life form. An automated maitre'- d.

"But the experience isn't finished yet!" He said "There's more to come!"

I was stunned. Had I been about to head us off with a critical part of the process unfinished? Might another trip to Rishan Pleasure Base Five set us to rights? Might I be able to see Sandra one more time?

"All Stop!" I said "I'll go, Carubo, but no one else!"

Li'ira's disapproval was thinly veiled. "Captain," She emphasized the title "Is it worth the risk?"

I turned to her "You know we won't make it like this." I wasn't addressing my crew. This was a panel of retired captains and admirals. "We need a break here. This is the closest thing I can see."

Varupuchu shook his head "You're still the Captain of the Harrier. We can't

afford to loose you. Anyone else is more expendable."

"I disagree." I said "Together on this bridge we have more than five hundred years worth of command experience. Our lowly-est Ensign is now an old space dog. Command is not what we're hurting for. But that's why we're hurting."

I spoke carefully "My decision is made. Go to yellow alert and raise the shields. Open a single beaming hole for the Pleasure Base to beam me over. When the Base signals it's readiness to send me back then a single beaming hole will be re-established and you will recover me. Then you will begin to move away from the Base. If it works out that I am better then we will return."

Everyone grudgingly gave me their agreement.

-*-

The bridge of the Challenger shuddered around me. Red Alert flashed through smoke and fire. We were taking a beating, but it was worth it.

The Kliges'chee had finally swamped the Romulan Empire and were now making in roads into the Federation. The Federation and the Klingons had proved too much together for the Kliges'chee to eat.

Although battles raged all across the front, I had seen the projections. I knew of no data to contradict the big computers at Starfleet Command. We were going to win in the end.

Two Kliges'chee ships moved to catch us in a crossfire. "Hard to port!" I barked "Begin evasive pattern Delta!"

The big Galaxy class ship rolled over and threw her bulk into a complicated evasive routine. The Kliges'chee fell prey to our escorts.

"Report!"

"Shields at 63%. Damage to decks 34, 35 and 36. Main Engineering compromised, but the Warp Core is still good and back up controls are on line. Casualties are heavy in engineering."

My heart ached. My crew was dying. We were going to spend our best blood beating the Kliges'chee in a fight that was a foregone conclusion.

"How about the transports?"

We were covering the evacuation of the colony of "Four Corners". Its four armed inhabitants had their whole planetary defense out guarding our backs.

Soon the last of the non-combatants would be free of the war zone. The Kliges'chee would not eat them. The fighting was intense. The Kliges'chee didn't like refugees escaping and pulled out all the stops to get them before they were out of reach.

"No transports have been engaged by the enemy. They are five minutes away from the transwarp conduit."

"Arm quantum phase torpedoes, prepare for a fleet level bombardment." I grinned a feral grin. The Kliges'chee weren't going to like these...

"Breakthrough! Breakthrough!" The Tactical Officer shouted "Four, no five Kliges'chee ships have broken through the screen! They're headed for the transports!"

On another screen I could see the commander of the Four Corners Defense Forces begin to shout orders. I leaned into the screen and spoke firmly. If the Four Corners forces didn't follow the game plan then we'd be pulling defeat from the jaws of victory

"Commander Macabee! Hold the screen! Don't let any more of the bastards through!"

"But the other ships.." He began

"Don't worry, Commander, the Challenger will give them other things to think about."

The thought of my flagship tearing into the Kliges'chee obviously pleased Macabee. "Go get 'em Admiral!"

"Hard about! Plot a course to intercept the Kliges'chee ships and engage at full impulse! Engineering bring the impulse reactors to 105 percent!"

The Challenger leapt towards the Kliges'chee breakthroughs.

"Admiral," Lieutenant Vorkosigan said quietly, but urgently "We're still set for a fleet bombardment of quantum phase torpedoes."

There was no time to empty the tubes and rearm normal photon torpedoes. "Do the best you can." Was all I said. I knew the short Lieutenant would correct for my mistake.

"Permission to fire?" He said. I knew he meant that we needed to fire while the Kliges'chee were still far enough from the refugee transports for the transports not to be hit by the torpedoes

"Your discretion, Tactical." I gave him permission to fight the Challenger as well as he could.

The Challenger spat small warp speed projectiles at the Kliges'chee ships. As they got into range of the Kliges'chee ships they blossomed into huge explosions. Machinery inside the torpedoes took a fraction of energy of those explosions and used it to power massive subspace pulses.

Vorkosigan had given the transports plenty of room. Nevertheless, this was enough for the Kliges' chee to escape the worst of the effects of our new torpedoes. The edges of the effects were bad enough. The Kliges'chee were tossed and damaged while their warp fields and force fields flickered and died. One of them lost anti-matter containment and detonated like a small star.

The Challenger swept in behind the wall of destruction like an avenging angel, but the Kliges'chee were prepared and turned towards us. There followed a bitter knife fight as the Challenger and four Kliges'chee cruisers passed with in a hundred meters of each other, phasers cutting deep into hulls and plasma rams blazing like stars.

One Kliges'chee turned away to make a run for the transports, but his own singleness of purpose killed him, as Vorkosigan shot him with a full barrage of photon torpedoes.

I clung to my seat and tried to keep track of all that was happening to me and my ship. One of my screens showed the exterior situation, where the Kliges'chee ships were and what they were doing. The other showed a schematic of the Challenger and how we were doing. Neither screen looked good.

I routed helm control to my panel as the Conn exploded killing my helmswoman. There was nothing I could do, except to keep telling the computer to instigate the battle patterns prepared by Vorkosigan.

Soon helm was taken over by the auxiliary control and I was able to view the Challenger's status. I was shocked. Most of shields were gone and there was heavy damage all over the ship. More than half of us were dead already.

"The Transports are entering the transwarp conduit!" Vorkosigan shouted. "They're away!"

I triggered the address intership and said "All hands! All hands! The transports are away!"

Somewhere I heard cheers as the last Kliges'chee ship rammed us.

I came to on the deck of the Challenger's bridge. The lights were out and I was hurt. I could see the red glow of a few emergency lights glowing. This was mixed with the orange flickers of fires on the bridge. On the main screen I could see the tactical display. The Starfleet and Four Corners ships were making for the transwarp conduit with the Kliges'chee in hot pursuit.

"Warning!" The computer sounded urgent in a detached sort of way "Warp core breach in forty five seconds! Please evacuate!" I could see a few life pods from the Challenger moving away. I knew that they would be beamed aboard the Starfleet ships as they passed. Looking around I realized that I was the last survivor on the bridge.

I tried to get up and get to an escape pod, but I fell right back onto the deck. It was hard to breathe and my whole left side hurt. I shivered. The bridge seemed cold. The gravity swayed drunkenly as the energy ran down in the life support batteries.

My captain's chair was on the floor next to me, with the left side burned to a crisp. The right screen was still working. I laughed a little at that. Why bother?

Macabee was on the screen yelling "Hold on Challenger! We'll be there in a few seconds! Try to stabilize your warp core!"

My left hand was a mangled claw so I hit the comm switch with my right hand. He jerked at my signal. I was probably quite a sight. "Don't bother Dozier, We're done. Get through that conduit."

"But..."

"Don't be stupid! Move!" I shouted. I noticed my words were blurry. It hurt in a distant sort of way. I knew I didn't have time for pain now.

I thought of all I had done since we had come back with the Harrier twenty four years ago. I had commanded the Challenger and we had done some good work. Then the Kliges'chee had made their big push. I was promoted to Admiral and put behind a desk to make suggestions about fighting the Kliges'chee that no one listened to. At least, not until the Kliges'chee reached the neutral zone. I was still angry about something that had happened during the Harrier's voyage. I could never put my finger on why, but the feeling had dogged me for twenty four years that I had left something undone.

It was a good life and a death worth dying, I thought, as the Dozier and the last of the ships made it through the transwarp conduit to safety.

"Captain's Log, 76450.9, final entry. We have successfully escorted a refugee convoy away from the Federation Colony of Four Corners. We have been critically damaged and the ship is on the verge of destruction. I want to note the courage and bravery of my crew and especially Lieutenant Vorkosigan, without whom, the mission would have had a greater cost of lives..."

I finished the log entry, loaded it into the marker buoy and jettisoned it.

There was an incredibly bright flash...

-*-

I was back on the bridge of the Harrier, again. I almost didn't recognize the displays. I wondered if this was going to happen every time I died?

I noticed that the Harrier was also on red alert. "Report!" I barked.

"When you were beamed back four more people were taken by the base, Sir." Li'ira grimly replied.

Oh Ghod. I tried to remember what I was thinking twenty four years ago when I left the bridge of the Harrier...

Just for a second I thought of Sandra's face if I could tell her what was happening to me. Twenty four years had dulled that pain, but I still winced at the thought.

If we all went through that again, then we'd be sixty to a hundred and twenty or more years of subjective time out of date on our own ship. I might just recover from the second pass, but I didn't know if the Harrier was even going to leave orbit from Rishan Pleasure Base number Five.

"Hail Carubo."

As quick as a blink the smarmy representative for the station appeared on the main screen. "How may I help you. Captain Hailey of the Harrier?"

"Return my crewmen, now."

"But, their experience is not complete!"

"I don't care, send them back!"

"But, the process is not complete. I apologize for any inconvenience, but we can not be held responsible for any health or mental effects of an interrupted virtual life time. For that reason I must decline." He cut the connection.

"Are the shields still in place?" I asked

"Yes, Captain." Stephanie said. She was slow to respond. She had to double check that the shields she was seeing were the only ones available and that they were up.

"Battle stations. Bring us to point blank range of the Base." I ordered.

It took forever for the Harrier to show the green lights for each section that signaled readiness for battle. Eventually we were ready and the Harrier moved in close to Rishan Pleasure Base Five

"Arm plasma rams." I said

"Er... Captain, we don't have those."

"What do we have?"

Li'ira broke in "Captain are you sure you're okay?"

"We can't handle another pass through that thing. It's just more of the same."

Li'ira nodded

"Phasers and photon torpedoes armed, Captain." Stephanie reported.

"Is that all we have?" I was having trouble remembering the stats on the Harrier.

"Yes, Sir."

"Right, what are the defensive systems of the base?"

"None detected, Captain."

"Fire a single photon torpedo into it." I ordered.

Stephanie complied. The Harrier spat a torpedo at the base. It looked slow to me. The torpedo hit the base and absolutely nothing happened. The torpedo simply ceased to exist.

We stood and stared for a moment. There was no reason why that should have happened.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Tillean said

"Oh, hell." I said. I had the distinct feeling that we had just messed with some bad customers.

With no warning or comment a man appeared on the main screen. He was a dark skinned man with sculpted features that looked somehow odd.

"What is the meaning of this?" He said. "Explain yourself."

"I am Captain Jay P. Hailey of the Cha- Harrier, a Federation starship. We come in peace, but this machine has begun to damage our minds. We have attacked in the hopes of escaping with no further harm."

"I am Maro, the intention to safeguard this base. What are you doing in this area?"

"We are on a mission of peaceful exploration. We are in distress. Will you help us?"

"Hmmm. You are obviously not mature or developed enough to handle our amusements. Stand by."

-*-

I was back on the Bridge of the Harrier. So was every one else. I had the impression that we had been away, but I couldn't say where.

"Report?" I said

The crew quickly moved to their familiar positions. The sight filled me with joy although I couldn't say exactly why.

"All decks secure, no damage, although there have been some mysterious alterations in Engineering." Varupuchu reported

"Are we functional?"

"Yes, Captain."

A face appeared on our view screen. It was a dark skin man with sculpted features and a widows peak that would have done Dracula proud. He looked threatening and severe.

"Go away. You are not welcome here." He said with steel in his voice.

"I am Captain Jay P. Hailey, of the Federation starship Harrier. Will you please communicate with us?"

"No! You are not welcome. Go!"

"Are you certain?"

The figure grew grim. Alarms went off on Stephanie's tactical station and the Harrier went to red alert. "Incoming!" She reported. "Plasma Torpedo! Force Nine!"

I went pale. A force nine plasma torpedo would strip our shields off in a single attack and leave us a crippled wreck

"Evasive, warp power to the shields!" I shouted. Spaat moved to comply with admirable speed, but we were at point blank range. It was way too late.

The torpedo veered off at the last moment and continued off into space, detonating a billion kilometers away. The blast rattled the Harrier a little even so.

Another alarm sounded on Stephanie's board. "Anti-Proton beam! Six point five tetra-electron volts!" She said

We watched as the beam played towards us and then stopped inches short of our shields. Not that our shields would have slowed that beam even slightly.

"I trust my meaning is clear?" The man on the screen said

"Extremely!" I said "Spaat, get us out of here. Best speed!"

The Harrier ran from the alien base as fast as she could go.

-*-

Several hours later, we found the records and logs that told us the whole story. We listened as our own voices told of the events of Rishan Pleasure Base Five.

The Harrier had recorded four minutes during which Maro had transported every crew member off the Harrier, through our shields.

When we returned we retained no memories of these virtual lives, although I find myself dreaming of those images sometimes. Other crewmen have told me that they do, too.

I have only one regret. I wonder what this Sandra person was like? She sounded nice...

-End-

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.