Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode 11: The Kliges'chee

(Stardate 45718)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

  

The Kliges'chee came on screen and I stared for a moment. It would take some work to imagine a creature more ugly. He had about a dozen eyes. Each was different. Some were multifaceted insectoid eyes. Some were bulging sacks of goo that pulsated. Some were almost human. They were the worst, a piece of normalcy transplanted into something horrible.

The Kliges'chee's body was an indistinct mottled green blob. Several tentacles waved around it, almost as though they were separate creatures. Some of the tentacles even had tiny eyes of their own. The whole body was covered in a layer of thick, slimy mucous. The mucous formed thick spots and thin spots, and from some locations it dripped off the Kliges'chee's body.

The air visible behind the creature was a sickly green mist that hid the details of the bridge of the Kliges'chee starship. I knew that the green fog was actually a mix of methane and ammonia, at a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

With effort I restrained my urge to scream and hide. Instead I said "I am Captain Jay P. Hailey of the Federation starship Harrier. We are on a peaceful mission of exploration. Will you communicate with us?"

The Kliges'chee seemed to think about this for a moment, squishing idly in his mucous. "You are the Federation?"

"Yes, we are from the United Federation of Planets."

"Do you fight the Romulans?" It asked.

This was a difficult question to answer. I didn't want to describe the Federation on the basis of our hostilities. The Federation was more a statement of principles than another generic player of galactic politics. On the other hand, the truth was less than idyllic.

"Yes, when we must." I allowed.

"We are the Kliges'chee! We wish an alliance with the Federation against the Romulans!" The creature seemed excited, but I couldn't say why I thought so.

"Err, that's a little abrupt. Let's talk about it for a while first and see if our aims are compatible."

"What's to discuss? If you fight the Romulans then you regard them as enough of a threat to take up arms against them. If we win against the Romulans, then they will not threaten either you, or me."

"I am not authorized to make such a treaty." I lied. "I will have to report back to my High Command, and get guidance back from them."

"Non Sequitur."

"I'm sorry. We seem to be having a communications problem. I must report back to my superiors."

"Please do so, and tell us what they say, immediately."

"Err, that's not practical at this point. The message carrying my report will take about six weeks to arrive, and then the Federation will have to consider the issue. Then their reply will take another six weeks to return to us."

"What method of communications are you using?"

"Err, we call it subspace radio." I wasn't giving away anything here. The Kliges'chee were using subspace signals to probe the USS Harrier.

"You are not now in contact with your high command?"

I didn't like the way this was going. "Not in real time, no."

"Then you are Rihannsu!" The channel was cut.

I stood for a moment as the questions bounced around in my mind. "Rihannsu" is a word in an old Romulan dialect. It means, roughly, "Romulan". He had called us Romulans. If he was surprised that I was not in contact with Starfleet Command, did that imply that he was in direct contact with the Kliges'chee high command?

My attention returned to the Bridge of the Harrier as I heard the report from Stephanie Anderson, my chief of Security and senior tactical officer. "They have raised shields! They are coming about!"

"Red Alert! Shields up!" Barked Li'ira, my first officer.

"His weapons are armed. I am reading a strange energy build up in an unknown device on the Kliges'chee ship."

A Romulan derelict that we had explored six months ago had held records of a device that had stripped the Romulans defensive screens away. It had been fired at them by the Kliges'chee.

"Rotate shield nutation!" I ordered. This tactic had been improvised as a defense against the Borg. The Borg had a tractor beam that drained the force fields of Federation starships in a matter of seconds.

The shields of the Harrier operated in certain electromagnetic frequencies like any energy. It was prohibitively expensive to block the entire electromagnetic spectrum at once, so the shields were stronger in some frequencies than others. These frequencies also had certain ranges in which they liked to vibrate. The frequency of the electromagnetic waves could be subtly changed to avoid having enemy ships tune their weapons against the weak spot in your shields.

By constantly changing the frequencies generated by the Harrier's shields, I hoped that the Kliges'chee "Shield Disruptor" would either not work at all, or for a greatly reduced effect.

The tactic had been mildly successful against the Borg, changing the failure rate of the shields from fifteen seconds to three minutes.

"Begin evasive pattern kappa!" Li'ira instructed Spaat, our Vulcan Helm Officer. He obliged and the Harrier began to dodge the incoming fire. We were at a dead stop relative to the other ship, and so did not move as quickly as I would have liked.

"Arm Phasers!" I said. I hoped that the sight of our weapons arming would give the Kliges'chee pause while he thought about it.

"He's come about! He firing!" Stephanie said. A strange blue globe of energy formed at the forwards tip of the Kliges'chee starship. It had a coruscating nimbus of energy around it. The blue globe detached itself from the tip of the Kliges'chee ship and flew over to us. It was certainly going to hit us. I gripped the sides of my chair as the projectile hit us.

The lights on the bridge flickered ominously and some began flashing or otherwise malfunctioning.

"A direct hit, Captain. Shields are down by eighty percent."

"Fire Phasers!" I said. We couldn't take another hit like that. The phasers of the Harrier lashed out. Destructive beams struck the Kliges'chee, and coruscated off his force screens.

"Direct hits. He's showing light damage to his forward sections. His shields are down to seventy-five percent."

"Continue evasive maneuvers, Mr. Spaat." I said. I was acutely aware of how badly our own shields had been weakened at that point.

"He's lining up for another shot. Sensors show a large disruptor like weapon mounted along his X axis, facing forwards." Harksain Varupuchu reported.

"Evade that!" I told Mr. Spaat. There was a reason that Federation Starships usually don't mount huge axial cannons. They can be difficult to line up in close combat.

The Harrier groaned and the deck seemed to tilt, as Mr. Spaat pushed my starship to her limits, trying to avoid the arc of the Kliges'chee weapon. An annoying beep sounded from Stephanie's board and then the Harrier shuddered.

"We've been hit. It was a glancing blow." Stephanie reported. "Shields down to sixteen percent. They are about to collapse."

"Phasers fire at will!" Again the phasers of the Harrier spit at the Kliges'chee. There were several hits.

"His shields are at sixty seven percent. He's got a plasma leak, but otherwise light damage." Varupuchu said.

"Mr. Spaat, get us out of here." I had an idea of how this was going to turn out, and I didn't want to be there to see it.

"Aye Captain, energy to warp drive."

The Harrier leaped into subspace ahead of the Kliges'chee.

-*-

The plasma leak kept the Kliges'chee from pursuing us until it was too late. We watched on long range sensors as the Kliges'chee ship failed to follow an evasive turn, and continued into space away from us. With relief we went to yellow alert and began to repair our damage. We were fortunate that no one on the Harrier was killed. None of the damage was too severe. We snuck away.

-*-

"It seems that we have just recently entered Kliges'chee space." Ensign Zuma said. He was the tactical expert on the Harrier. Stephanie Anderson's training as a police officer didn't give her a lot of experience at starship combat. Ensign Zuma on the other hand was natural talent in the field.

He was a thin, unimpressive man, with a nasal and annoying voice. I didn't hold it against him. His talents gave the Harrier an advantage in combat that she might not otherwise have.

"The ship seems roughly the same size as the Kliges'chee ship in the Et-Tu records, but the design has been significantly upgraded. It has several features that suggest its attack patterns and functions."

He went to a screen and called up a technical readout based on the ship we had seen.

"The main weapon is an axial disruptor cannon. From the energy signature you can see that it is nearly identical to a Romulan unit, except that the Kliges'chee model is much bigger and isn't fired with the same density of energy. It's as if it's a Romulan Disruptor unit that was built ten times larger and then fired at only twenty percent power."

That confused me. An energy weapon is only as good as the energy you can channel through it. Why build such a huge weapon and then only fire it with partial power?

"The rest of the armament is arranged along the two outrider pods. two mounts of two each of weapons that are similar to Romulan disruptor units. These are on a much more conventional scale and energy curve." He hesitated. "Except that they are too small. They would be of some value against shielded targets, but not as much as we might expect."

He looked around the table nervously wiping his palms on the legs of his pants. "Given the capabilities of the Kliges'chee shield disruptor weapon, I speculate that these outrider pod disruptors are weapons designed to chop the weapons and engines off a target ship once its shields are neutralized."

That was kind of reaching. "What possible point might there be in that?" I asked.

"Remember that Commander Zadask of the Et-Tu said that the Kliges'chee might beam his crew aboard and eat them?" Zuma looked nervous. "If you take that literally, them the function of the Kliges'chee ship becomes clear. It is designed to approach an enemy, knock down their shields with the shield disruptor. Then it closes in and takes their engines and weapons off with the outrider pod weapons. Then the Kliges'chee beam the survivors off and eat them. The axial weapon might be for planetary bombardment. I don't know that it would be all that useful in ship-to-ship combat."

I wanted to argue. On one level it made no sense. However, Zuma had a point about the design of the Kliges'chee ship that was too accurate to ignore.

-*-

Two days later the Harrier slid into stellar system that we had spotted. It was centered on a dim red dwarf star, the most common in the universe. The little red star had a large gas giant as it's only planet. This was basic move in starship combat. Gas giants had large and violent zones of electromagnetic disturbances and radiation storms. This made the sensors on the Harrier and any pursuing ships unreliable. We ducked into orbit around the gas giant in an attempt to lose any pursuit. The Kliges'chee ship had plenty of time now to call a warning to other ships or bases nearby.

Because of the effects of the gas giant, we didn't see the Kliges'chee moon until we were almost on top of it.

-*-

"Report." I said. We had been scanning the moon since we had stumbled onto it. The sensors weren't doing too much good, since they were badly muddled from the nearby gas giant.

"There seems to be a ring." Tillean, the Science Officer said.

We could see it on the snowy, intermittent view screen pictures. "The ring probably has a high metallic content."

"Are there any energy signatures?" I asked

"I can't tell precisely, Captain. I might be able to spot a starship in this mess, but anything less energetic would be difficult to spot definitively."

"How about life signs?"

"Probably not. Again I can't tell for absolutely certain."

"Yellow Alert. Raise shields. Take us closer."

It was a risk, but my curiosity was nagging at me.

-*-

The ring was destroyed Kliges'chee starships. There must have been thousands of them. We hadn't been able to spot the energy and left over radiation from the battle because of the interference from the gas giant planet, but the signs were all there.

The moon had once been fit for Kliges'chee, but had been bombarded into a wreck, the surface was chewed up, and the mix of gasses was all wrong. There were layers of frozen oxygen on the new surface. Oxygen at gaseous temperatures would have fried any surviving Kliges'chee on the moon. There were dead Kliges'chee in orbit among the wrecks, and littered all over the ground in the ruins of a huge Kliges'chee base.

We couldn't get a decent estimate of how many Kliges'chee had been killed there, but it was over ten thousand. The wreckage seemed about three years old. I wondered at first if the Romulans might have been involved, but there was nothing to suggest that. The wreckage contained only Kliges'chee ships, and the weapons traces could have all been Kliges'chee. True the main disruptor of the Kliges'chee ships was structurally similar to the Romulan model, but there were no plasma torpedo fingerprints or photon torpedo residues.

We quickly slid away from the battleground and headed due galactic south. We were headed out of the plane of the ecliptic for the galaxy. There were many fewer stars in this direction, but that meant much less reason for Kliges'chee ships to be there.

-*-

A week later we were still heading galactic south, but I had elected to visit type "G" stars and any class "M" planets along the way. We were still in need of new stocks of spare parts and supplies, as well as a friendly port.

We were approaching the first such star along our route. As we reached the edge of the solar system belonging to this star, we dropped out of warp and began scanning.

We spotted a class "M" planet in the second orbit out from the star.

"Yellow Alert. Set course for that planet, and engage at one half impulse power." I ordered.

Over the next four hours we scanned the planet as we approached. It was inhabited by a sentient species, and they had a certain amount of technology visible.

-*-

The Harrier was at an extremely ready version of yellow alert. We were nervous about running into a group of Kliges'chee ships. Everyone wanted to be on their toes in case the Harrier had to run for her life.

"Captain, we're being hailed." Stephanie said.

"The planet?" I asked.

"Yes, Captain. The signal is addressed to us, but it's being carried by a primitive radio carrier wave."

"On screen."

The screen fuzzed for a moment while the computer sorted the signal out, and then a face appeared on the screen. They were humanoid. They had a complicated set of cartilage ridges along their nose.

"Alien ship! Identify yourself!" The man seemed tense and on a hair trigger.

"This is the starship Harrier. We are on a mission of peaceful exploration. Will you communicate with us?"

He waited. I realized that the carrier signal was traveling at the speed of light and would take a few moments to reach him. Idly I thought of changing the way I introduced the Harrier. The standard phrasing I used seemed more an invitation to trouble than anything else.

"Thank God! Please come into orbit and maintain radio silence until a tight beam can be arranged." The man's face was beaming happily.

"Agreed." I said and then motioned to Stephanie to cut the transmission.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Li'ira said.

-*-

"I am Defense Minister Nook." The man on the screen said. His appearance screamed "Jarhead!". His hair was cut in a short bushy cut and his back was ramrod straight. His uniform was crisp and incredibly precise, with much symbology on it.

"How many are in your flotilla?" He asked.

"Er, we are alone. We are on an exploration mission." I explained. Nook's face grew grim.

"We would like to discuss an alliance and technical advice for our military."

"Hmmm. That's a little premature. Can we meet and discuss it at further length?"

"Yes. That is a job for more civilian officials, in any case. We will contact you again." In his crisp, military style, Nook cut the channel.

-*-

We agreed to the meeting. The people were called the Murachi, and their planet was called Murachi. They seemed in something of a hurry.

Their shuttlecraft was a larger fusion powered affair. It was good design, but not an advanced one. It landed in the Harrier's shuttle bay and as soon as the atmosphere was re-established, the Murachi representatives came aboard.

There was Nook, the Defense Minister, Suarin, a member of the Elected Council, and Crelose the Minister of Culture.

Their Marine bodyguards suspiciously eyed the Starfleet Marines that I had set out as an Honor Guard, but stayed with shuttle at a word from Nook.

We adjourned to the conference room and the representatives got right to business.

"We were conquered by the Kliges'chee thirty years ago." Nook was telling us. "They swept in swiftly, and destroyed all of our space vehicles. Then they bombed our cities and systematically destroyed our military. Then they called us and demanded immediate and unconditional surrender. The whole war lasted just over one day." He seemed bitter. "They demanded that we submit to the kidnapping of thousands of our citizens. They informed us that they were prepared to destroy all life on our planet and just go find someone else to

conquer if we gave them any reason to believe that we were resisting them."

"Since then, Kliges'chee ships visit once or twice a year. They arrive in orbit and randomly beam our citizens to their ships and then eat them."

"We lost five thousand people, last year." Crelose said. He was a distinct contrast to Nook. Where Nook was a military man through and through, Crelose looked like some sort of academic. He wore a rumpled sweater and old, baggy slacks. His manner was quiet and somewhat personable. The number of Murachi people lost seemed to genuinely sadden him.

The other representative, Suarin, was a born politician. He grinned upon being welcomed aboard the Harrier. He shook my hand, and seemed to want me to feel as though he were my true friend, right away. Any moment I expected him to try to sell me something. I was not disappointed.

"We are in a bad position, but don't think that we're purely a charity case." He said "We could be very good, loyal and profitable allies."

"Listen," I said. "I am sorry to hear of your situation, but my ability to change it is extremely limited. The Harrier is a lone ship. We couldn't liberate you from the Kliges'chee by ourselves, and there probably isn't going to be a Federation fleet in the area for quite some time." I was thinking of what the Federation Council might say if asked to fund a rescue mission to this planet. The fleet would take nearly three years to get here, if they didn't stop along the way. I mentally arranged the transports and tenders necessary to support a large fleet. Then I acquired the starships and the ground forces. Then I bought the two or three Starliners needed to give the Spacemen, Soldiers and Marines a place to go for R-and-R during the long trip.

It was hideously expensive. Add to that the fact that if the fleet was defeated or surprised by enemy forces or a strange phenomenon, then you'd have scattered and possibly damaged ships in the same condition as the Harrier was in now.

All this to fight a war against an enemy that didn't directly threaten the United Federation of Planets or have any declared hostilities with us.

I could almost hear the gales of laughter from the council chambers now.

On the other hand I could understand how awful it must be to be a Murachi and know that aliens could beam you up and eat you and that your world was powerless to do anything about it.

"I'll see what we can do." I said. I couldn't stand to leave these people without any hope at all.

-*-

We found out why the Murachi seemed to be in such a hurry. They were deeply afraid that if the Harrier was discovered in orbit around their planet by the Kliges'chee that it would be taken as evidence of resistance. The Kliges'chee promised that they would then eliminate all life on Murachi in that case.

So we quickly taught the Murachi about the basics of subspace theory and left them with some technical data. This was about what they might get if they captured a Kliges'chee ship, with manuals and basic educational books. Again I had violated the Prime Directive.

In this instance I didn't think that the Prime Directive was directly applicable. If a natural or self-made disaster was about to eliminate a planet full of sentients we would try to help, out of sight of the natives. However, if we couldn't do anything without revealing ourselves or the existence of life in outer space, then we were obligated to let them die. However, the Murachi had already been informed of life in space and many of the ways of doing things that were considered advanced like subspace scanners, and transporters.

This was not the usual interpretation of this rule. Fifty years ago the Cardassian Union had occupied Bajor, a planet with an old and advanced humanoid race. They had space travel for thousands of years. Starfleet and the Federation had spent a couple of years dithering and then decided that it was an "internal" matter and backed off.

Bajor was now a downtrodden and wasted planet oppressed and stripped by the Cardassians. But the Federation had postponed a bitter and expensive war with the Cardassians for another thirty years.

Therefore, the guiding principle behind interference with an outside invader was actually a matter of expense and convenience for the Federation. The Murachi were certainly an inconvenient case, but I made a point of not committing the Federation to any further aid.

Instead I invited the Murachi to send a group of delegates with us to the Federation Council. This was a gesture, I knew what the Federation Council's answer would be. I also knew that it would be years before the Murachi left behind knew, if ever. They would have hope.

The Murachi decided to send Nook, the Defense Minister, Suarin, the Politician, and Crelose the Minister of Culture. Crelose was actually fun to have. He was a Murachi historian and sociologist. He couldn't wait to see the different races and cultures aboard the Harrier close up. Suarin immediately began to lobby the crew for support of an alliance. He adapted reasonably well to the Harrier also. The odd man out was Nook. The only people he understood at all were the Marines. Away from them his social integration was minimal.

The longest part of our mission was taking complete copies of all the Murachi archives. Crelose had been collecting the works of Murachi civilization and culture and squirreling backups away in case they were needed. We got copies for the Federation Archives, just in case everything went wrong.

We left Murachi two weeks later, never having spotted a Kliges'chee ship. Once we had gotten away from the planet, I let the delegates in on the whole story. They were disturbed to find that we were lost and had no idea what might lay between us and home.

-*-

I was in the lounge of the Harrier, eating lunch when Crelose came to me and said "Captain, may I have a word with you?"

"Certainly, Crelose. May I order you something?" Crelose was very good at sociology, especially socialization within groups. Most of us were on a first name basis with him already.

"I have heard, what do you call it? Scuttlebutt? Yes? Well, I have heard scuttlebutt that says you think that you are near the edge of Kliges'chee space?"

"This has been our assumption."

"This is not so. We are currently well within the Kliges'chee sphere of influence."

"How do you know this?" I couldn't imagine where he might come up with that information.

"Our military intelligence analyzes the ships that stop at Murachi diligently. They estimate that Murachi is located near a routine Kliges'chee patrol route and that the route takes nearly one year to complete."

"Oh." If I believed what Crelose was telling me, then the Harrier had stumbled much deeper into Kliges'chee space than I had thought. If we continued to stumble along with the same luck, we might make it out of Kliges'chee territory. If we were unlucky we might stumble into a fleet.

"There might be an alternative," Crelose said.

"What's that?"

"According to our most ancient legends, a race of gods named the Harmon live near the largest blue star that rises in our night sky. We were going to send a scouting mission there before the Kliges'chee conquered us."

"The Harmon?" That was the name of the beings that had englobed the Kurr Association. If it was the same bunch I had to go and try to get them to reconsider the fate of the Kurr.

The Kurr were a group of ninety seven allied worlds that were trapped inside a huge one hundred light year wide energy bubble. The were a nice bunch of people, with a lot in common with the Federation. If the Federation had been unluckier the Organians or the Q might have done the same to us.

-*-

It took just a few minutes for stellar cartography to narrow down the location specified in the Murachi legends. The big blue giant star the legends named was ninety light years away, almost directly perpendicular to our current course. Was this further into Kliges'chee space? None of the Murachi delegates knew.

We set course for what I hoped was Harmon space that afternoon.

Essay:

The Harrier: An Alternate Universe of Star Trek

By Jay P. Hailey

 

These are a few notes of background material for my Star Trek stories, The Voyage of the Harrier.

The Harrier began its life as a series of role-playing scenarios. Being a die hard fan of both Star Trek and Role Playing I have long dreamed of finding a worthy campaign of Star Trek to play in. My friend Dennnis Washburn was an avid role player (He taught me all I know on the subject), but not as much of a Star Trek fan as I.

Hearing my pathetic pleas for a good game of Star Trek, Dennnis went ahead and created the Harrier game.

I won't bore you with the details of how we worked it out, but I will say that it was an interesting experience and that at the time I took extensive notes.

Later I was trying to write stories. I like to write Star Trek, but very often it is difficult for me to come up with a plot that interested me. All the good ones seem to have been done, as well as a lot of bad ones.

Seeing the characters and events of the old Harrier Game, I realized that with a little alteration and rewriting of the events as role played, the Harrier might make for an interesting story. So, With Dennnises input and permission I have begun to relate the noteworthy events of the 1992-1995 USS

Harrier/Discovery Game.

Dennnis came up with the plots, really. I have rewritten the games he GMed as stories adding the characterizations and insights into how everyone was feeling and thinking at the time. For this I am indebted to Dennnis. I try to write the story to be as entertaining as possible, but the basic idea that drives it in each case is Dennnises.

We started with the "Holly Hop Incident." It was named for the episode of Red Dwarf late in it's second season. It's the one where the crazed AI, Holly sent the Red Dwarf to an alternate universe where the sexes of the main characters (The PCs if you will) were reversed.

The similarities were that both "Holly Hop Drives" were instant elsewhere drives that malfunctioned and sent the hapless starships to an alternate universe.

Following another adventure, the notes on which were lost, Dennnis decided to lose the Harrier in unknown space. He sent the ship 30,000 light years away from the Federation, halfway across the Galaxy. He later said that the idea of a lone ship with no back up trying to deal with the unknown and what they did with their "Federation-ness" and how they survived seemed rife with story telling possibilities.

Sound familiar? It's the premise for Star Trek: Voyager. My initial fear about the Harrier stories was that they might be viewed as a rip-off of Star Trek: Voyager. Dennnis invented the scenario some time before the series was announced and possibly before they thought of making it at all. My copy of the Star Trek Encyclopedia says that Deep Space Nine was developed and announced in 1992/1993, and that Star Trek: Voyager was probably in the planning stages in 1994. IMHO* Dennnis did it a little better, but that will have to await other judgment.

I immediately killed the game. I had the Star Trek Chronology, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and the Star Trek Encyclopedia as soon as they came out. I know what much of the Techno-Babble means. Dennnis, not being a hard core fan of Star Trek does not. Dennnis thought that 30,000 years was a medium distance.

Now in Star Trek distance is a complex issue, usually ignored or altered for the convenience of the story. In an RPG things have to be a little more controlled. So I dug into my reference materials and came up with the cruising speed of the star ship Harrier, IMHO. It's warp six, or one light year per day. (392c, as per the table on page 372 of the Star Trek Encyclopedia). Out came the old calculator and I quickly realized that it would take the Harrier 82.191 years to cross 30,000 light years, assuming warp six. That's all day, every day. No stops, no encounters, no adventures.

This assumption of hard and fast speeds and distances changes things somewhat for the Star Trek Universe as a whole. In our RPG it looks a little different from the ones on the screen. In Star Trek VI, Kirk specifies during the dinner scene, that the Enterprise is one thousand light years from high command, presumably Earth. Yet they made it there that afternoon, and Kirk didn't even have time to unpack. Star Trek is filled with this kind of thing. It makes maps and speed calculations nearly useless. However, in our games the Federation has a set area, some of it is mapped in detail. This changes one of the crucial details of Star Trek and makes the setting for the Harrier Stories somewhat different.

In case you're interested, the Voyagers' estimated flight time of seventy years is based on a speed of Warp 9.975, or six light years per day, all day, every day. They are already significantly behind schedule.

The fact that the Harrier was s similar eighty years away caught Dennnis off-guard. It wasn't what he was after, and he didn't know how to resolve it. He quit at that point.

Six months later I asked him about the game. (Was I getting twitchy? Mind your own business.) I found that he had wanted a three to five year trip back home. Once I knew this I was able to sit down, take off my shoes and arrive at a workable figure given my technical assumptions.

A side note here, is that the assumptions in my references, specifically the books by Okuda are controversial. Not everyone accepts what he says as gospel. I have tried to keep the story moving on a people basis and not a technical one. Except for the one light year per day at warp six and the distances and travel times, I have often succeeded. I wanted you to know where these silly ideas came from, anyway.

Once we got the travel times and distances settled, the Harrier was off again. And that's when I discovered another interesting factor. Time. Again I use the Okuda-books as my basis for dates and events within the Star Trek Universe. YMMV*. I deliberately set the start of the Harrier, the Holly Hop Incident six months after the Borg Incident. (ST:TNG, Best of Both Worlds Parts 1&2) Why else would a mid level bureaucrat be promoted to command a ship? Answer: They were short on captains.

After a couple of adventures I realized that we would soon be playing in the future of Star Trek by weeks, months and years. Soon, TPTB* would do something in Star Trek that would invalidate some part of our story.

This has in fact, happened. The war with the Klingons and all the paranoia about the Founders and the Gamma Quadrant are absent from my stories. We established our stories before the makers of Star Trek added these features to the one on television.

I tried to stay neutral on what was happening and where it was happening as much as possible. I tried to leave myself wiggle room, but another factor intervened.

Again, Dennnises lack of obsessiveness about the show became apparent, and he introduced a factor that changed the entire universe of Star Trek. This frustrated me a little bit. I wanted to imagine the same thing only different, and he was making it more different.

I don't want to give anything away, but you'll notice more divergence as time rolls on.

By 1994 I had to give it up and admit to myself that the Harrier stories are happening in a different place than the Star Trek I was seeing on TV. This allowed for a certain amount of freedom, especially for Dennnises ideas. I won't try to rewrite the Harrier stories to conform to current Star Trek continuity, that will only change again before I'm done anyway.

This allows the Harrier to come closer to being what it intrinsically is not - an original story. We played in the Star Trek universe, but bent it out of shape pretty badly in some areas.

My only justification is that it was fun while we did it, I hope it will be fun while you read it, And what they hey? It's only an imaginary place, anyway.

The name of this whole game is fun. I'm writing for fun. I hope you're reading for fun. If you're having fun, then the basic function of story is filled. We can hammer out the details later.

-end-

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