Episode 22: The Anti-Matter Pirates.

(Stardate 48479)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

"Report." I said as I entered the Bridge. The USS Discovery had come to a stop, but no alert had been sounded. A trio of probes were on the screen.

"A hailing signal has come from the probes." Chief of Security Stephanie Anderson said. "The probes are armed with anti-matter, but not in a significant amounts."

"Answer the hail."

"It's coming through, audio only." Lt. Commander Anderson said.

"This is Captain Hailey of the Harr- Discovery." I stumbled over the name. I was used to my previous command. It was embarrassing.

"USS Discovery. You are under the guns of pirates right now." The voice said. "We demand that you surrender immediately."

I was stunned. The USS Discovery was one of the biggest starships in the Federation at that time. We were packing more firepower than any pirate might overcome.

"Are you joking?" I said.

"Red alert." Commander Mendez said. The Discovery began to ready herself for battle. Carlos Mendez was the second in command of the Discovery.

"This is no joke, Captain. You will surrender and transfer twenty cubic yards of anti-matter to our ship or you will be destroyed."

The amount of anti-matter was close to half the antimatter that the Discovery was carrying. We could operate the Discovery for years with that amount.

"No." I said "Raise shields."

"I have a match on the voice, Captain." Lucas McCoy, the Chief of Operations said. "It's Roygon."

That was not good. Roygon had gained a reputation as a cunning and capable pirate. He was very mercenary and very good. When Roygon hailed you and demanded surrender you did not take it lightly.

"Arm weapons." I ordered. The Discovery was still a huge ship.

"The channel has been closed, Sir." Anderson said.

Kamaline Darvon Ahk, the Chief Science Officer reported "The signal is being routed through the probe from a cloaked ship. I am having trouble locating the cloaked ship."

"Keep on it." I said. I wanted to know what Roygon had up his sleeve.

We stood there like that for another five minutes, while nothing happened. I waited a little while longer and then said "Helm, resume course for Mereau 4, one half impulse."

"Aye, Sir." Lt. Spaat said. The Vulcan Helmsman wheeled the Discovery about and she began to move towards Mereau 4. At impulse the trip would have taken centuries, but I didn't want to trigger a booby trap that would disable our warp drives. It was a common trick to lay mines to wreck a starship's warp field.

As we moved, the trio of probes kept pace with us. I didn't like that.

"Keep a weather eye on those probes, Stephanie." I said.

"Aye, sir." She said.

The Discovery continued to accelerate for several more minutes.

"Got 'em!" Kamaline called. "Three cloaked ships are tailing us."

"Relay your data to tactical." I said. "Any idea which one Roygon is on?"

Kamaline looked at me "I'm good, but not that good, Sir."

"Pick one and lay in a course to intercept. Full impulse."

The Discovery turned and began to chase the pirates.

McCoy said "I'm reading a signal from the probes, Captain."

"What is it?"

McCoy routed what he was seeing to my chair. I put on the right hand monitor. I saw a beautiful tactical read out of the Discovery. I could see every detail of our shield and weapons configuration. It was scary. We couldn't get that good a scan of an enemy ship. We were looking at technologically advanced sensor and interpretation equipment.

"Begin to rotate shield nutation." I ordered. I hoped that the constantly changing shield frequencies would obscure the scan. I could see the signal from the probe degrade, very slightly.

"The cloaked ships have begun to take evasive action. They are not moving as fast as we are at impulse." Stephanie said.

I could see the other two ships moving off on our tactical screens. Our target began to weave and turn but he could not get away from the Discovery.

Now that Kamaline had broken some of their cloak we could mostly see them. We couldn't see any details but Stephanie and Kamaline were tracking them.

Then one of the trio of probes darted in front of us. It got right between us and our target and detonated. The explosion rocked the Discovery. It was huge. The probe must have been carrying at least thirty pounds of anti-matter.

"Damage report." I said.

"A few people have been shaken up, but nothing severe." McCoy said.

"You can't say the same for him." Stephanie said.

On the tactical screen an expanding cloud of debris replaced our target. We were still intercepting it.

A small voice spoke to Stephanie from her station. She listened for a bit and then said. "Captain, Zuma says that isn't the cloaked ship."

Ensign Zuma was a tactical genius who worked on the battle bridge of the USS Discovery. Stephanie's past history as a police officer hadn't prepared her for starship combat, but Zuma was a natural at it. He fed tactical data and suggestions to Stephanie from the other tactical panel and helped make her look good. I didn't mind. Stephanie was too good at the other tasks that came with being a Chief of Security.

"Resume scans." I said. Zuma was rarely wrong about such things.

A few tense moments passed.

"Got 'em again." Kamaline said. "Wow."

"What's that?" I asked.

"They're using a completely different cloaking protocol. If Ensign Zuma hadn't warned us, I would never have seen them."

Each cloaking device uses a subtly different collection of masks, filters and frequencies to do its job. The state of the art is constantly changing. Older cloaks are less effective against modern sensors. This was a very clever trick. To use two different cloaks, would present two totally different problems for a starship's sensors to adapt to.

We began to close on the target again. "Arm photon torpedoes for proximity detonation." The torpedoes would detonate a certain distance away from the cloaked ship. They would shake it up but not damage it too severely.

"Photons ready, Captain." Stephanie said.

"Fire."

Stephanie bracketed the cloaked ship neatly in a ring of photon torpedoes. As they went off I could imagine the rough ride that the pirates were getting.

The cloaked ship flew perfectly straight for a few moments. Kamaline shouted "Gamma burst! I'm reading a heavy explosion..."

The cloaked ship lost containment of its anti-matter converter and blew up. One moment there was the fuzzy shape of the cloak and then there was glowing wreckage.

"Oh, my Ghod." I said.

-*-

We scoured that area for life pods and the ship's recorder marker. We found no survivors. We did find the recorder marker but the explosion heavily damaged it. The best we could do was to determine that the hull was a generic hull used commercially all over known space and that Roygon was not one of the Bridge crew when the ship went up.

We also got some of the readings for the warp core. It was not very stable to begin with. Our torpedoes didn't hit the ship that hard but it was hard enough to send their balky warp core out of control. I was amazed. I wouldn't have gotten on a ship with a warp core that delicate.

It saved me from a terrible guilt trip, but added to the mystery. What were those people doing?

I reported the whole mess back to Starfleet. Over the course of the next two hours I received three replies. The local Starbase commander ordered us to stay out and search for the pirates. Starfleet Command ordered us to continue to Mereau 4 and complete our mission as stated.

Direct orders came to me from Admiral Necheyev to continue to Mereau 4 and to surreptitiously investigate the matter there.

So we continued to Mereau 4.

-*-

Mereau 4 was a pleasant little world, inhabited by humanoids only slightly different from humans. It was within one hundred light years of Earth, and further away from other places where things happened. It paid its taxes to the Federation and made little noise. It was simply a generic little Federation Planet.

On the other hand Mereau 4 had beautiful colored falls. They were great big cataracts that plummeted over rocks that had been discolored by different mineral deposits. They threw off mist which refracted rainbows everywhere. The water plunged into pools where algae grew in different colors depending on the minerals it ate. The people had a wide collection of native legends, myths, stories and histories. They even had funny costumes that they displayed for us.

While I met with the Chairman of the Grand Council of Mereau 4, Stephanie, Kamaline and Commander Mendez began their investigation. Commander Mendez had approached me to lay out their plans.

I agreed with Commander Mendez' plan for two reasons. One, the Captain of the ship was required to schmooze the big wigs of Mereau 4. It was my job. Two, I remembered the last time I had tried to go undercover. It had been years, but I could still hear the high pitched Ferengi guffaws and I could still see Stephanie's painfully straight face. It was obvious to me that infiltration was not my field. I suppose that was why Stephanie asked Commander Mendez to run interference for her.

I spent the afternoon touring the planet with McCoy and Doctor Burlington. We were shown to school children who couldn't figure out why we were important. I had to give short speeches to a few citizens' organizations and political clubs, thanking them honestly for their support of Starfleet and the Federation. I was even shown the Colored Falls and a few people put on costumes and danced authentic ethnic dances for me. You would have though that I was somebody. The fact was that they were gratified that the Federation and Starfleet thought enough of them to send a capital ship like the Discovery to glad hand them. They knew that otherwise they would not see a Starfleet Ship of the Line unless something very bad was occurring.

After the whirlwind tour and political activity, We held a reception in the Discovery's lounge for the leaders of Mereau 4 and all the cousins, aunts, uncles and important supporters that they could cram onto the guest list. It would be the party of the season.

In order to cover for the absence of several key officers, I asked Soren the Elder to join the party. He gracefully agreed. I also asked the Marines to attend in dress uniform. The heavy collection of spangles, braid and decoration characteristic of the Marine dress uniform blinded many of the Mereau 4 delegation. I even asked Aaron to put in an appearance. He didn't understand why he should go at first, but as the administrator of the colony that the Discovery was carrying, he was sort of in the command structure.

We had to replicate him a formal enough suit. Once he was in it he cut a swath through the reception. He was a master of the art of the art of conversation.

Towards the end of the evening, We took them on a tour of the non-classified areas of the ship. It was like herding cats. Everyone wanted to monkey directly with the warp core or try to steer the Discovery into another ship. When told that the bridge and the engine room were classified to protect defense secrets they were disappointed. Then the Chairman tried to use his political influence to get his youngest nephew on to the bridge. I took them to the holodeck and showed the around a simulation of the Enterprise-D's Bridge and Engine room. They were out of date, and that's what every one was expecting, anyway.

Eventually the tour wound up back in the transporter room and we beamed the delegation from Mereau 4 down to their homes.

Then I wandered back to my office to make the obligatory log entries and complete the day's paperwork.

I met Commander Mendez there. He was dressed in a business suit and looked for all the world like he worked in an office building on Earth.

"Good evening, Commander." I said tiredly.

"Good evening, Sir. I have a report."

"Go ahead."

"Mereau 4 has links to the underground economy. They are stronger than you might expect. They have a thriving business in the transshipment of anti-matter. There is also a market for mercenaries and smugglers here." Mendez said.

"Wow. That's excellent. How did you find out all of that?"

"Information is a commodity like anything else." Mendez said "At least that's the way Lt. Commander Anderson sees it. She requisitioned a sizable proportion of the Discovery's stock of gold pressed latinum, and is not shy about spending it."

"Ah. What's next?" I asked.

"Lt. Darvon Ahk will be forging us a background as a mercenary squad. We will attempt to infiltrate the local operation and find out what we can see."

"Aren't you suspicious? After all a Federation starship just rolled in." I asked

"Possibly, but there also a number of civilian ships here. Hopefully there are enough to obscure the issue."

"I hope you're right, Commander." I said. I signed off on the requisitions for all the material that Mendez, Stephanie and Kamaline thought they needed and I went to bed.

-*-

The next day was more of the same, a whirlwind tour of more of Mereau 4. It was a pleasant place, really kind of leafy, green and wet a lot.

That evening there was another, bigger reception at the Central Administration Building, where the Grand Council of Mereau 4 held office.

It was a major to-do and there were hundreds of people there. I swirled through the small groups of people being generally as agreeable and understanding as possible. Many of the people who helped with the party on the Discovery came down. Soren the Elder did not. I understood. To me the planet Mereau 4 was beautiful and sort of cold. To Soren or any other Vulcan it would have been positively arctic.

I was called away from the party by a call from the Discovery. Commander Mendez had been found stunned. I beamed immediately back to the Discovery, where I found Mendez in Sickbay.

Doctor Burlington said. "It's just a phaser stun. He'll feel like hell, but he'll be okay." She turned to other business.

Mendez was lying on the diagnostic bed. His eyes were not properly focused, and he looked like he was in pain.

"Report, Commander?" I said gently.

"I blew my cover. It was a stupid mistake. Kamaline was forced to stun me in order to save her own cover."

"Do you think it worked?" I asked. If Kamaline and Stephanie were in danger, then I wanted to be able to pull them out of it quickly.

"I don't know. I was unconscious when that was decided."

"Okay. Take care of yourself, Commander report to the bridge when you're able.

I went up to the bridge and waited nervously for some news. Soon, McCoy called me, down on the planet. "Captain, the Chairman's been asking after you. Will you be back soon?"

Please tell the Chairman, uh, that there was a small emergency aboard the

Discovery. Tell him I'll get back as soon as we lock it down."

"Aye, Sir."

-*-

Two hours later we got a call from Stephanie.

"Discovery, we're reporting in. How's Commander Mendez?"

"He's fine. How are you?"

"We seem to be okay. Kamaline stunned Mendez and said he was dead. I backed her up. They suggested we move to safer ground. We're about to take off to meet the leader of the mercenary group. We think it's heavily tied up with the anti-matter traffic in the area."

"Okay. Where is the leader?"

"He's on a ship called the Ziggurat in orbit now."

"Roger. We'll be watching."

"Thank you. Anderson out."

-*-

We tracked the freighter Ziggurat, and watched as a shuttlecraft docked with it. Soon the freighter powered up and began to leave orbit.

"Commander Mendez, pick a crew and go after that ship in the Phillip K. Dick." The Phillip K. Dick was a runabout named for a noted Earth philosopher from the twentieth century. Our second runabout was named the Robert A. Heinlein.

I couldn't just pick up and leave Mereau 4 without a good, good reason. Commander Mendez and smaller crew could.

"Shadow the Ziggurat unless it appears that Stephanie and Kamaline are in danger. If that happens then take the ship." I ordered

Commander Mendez took a squad of Marines and Lt. Snoopy with him on the Phillip K. Dick. He quietly left the main shuttle bay of the Discovery and moved quietly off after the Ziggurat.

I had to beam down and finish schmoozing with every one who was anyone on Mereau 4.

-*-

Eight hours later, the Ziggurat entered warp. We saw the Phillip K. Dick go after them. I couldn't stand it. Soon they would be out of direct sensor range.

"Set course to intercept the Ziggurat." I ordered, the Discovery moved away from Mereau 4.

-*-

It took a couple of hours to over take the Phillip K. Dick and the Ziggurat. They were moving along at Warp 4, about the maximum for smaller ships or older civilian ships like the Ziggurat. As we sighted the Ziggurat, an escape pod launched.

"Intercept that pod!" I said. Was it Kamaline and Stephanie?

The Discovery leapt ahead and began to close with the Ziggurat and the escape pod.

As soon as the Ziggurat saw us, She launched two runabouts of her own and began to run.

"Prepare for saucer separation. Man the Robert Heinlein and prepare to pursue one of the runabouts."

The odd sirens warning of impending Saucer separation sounded as I ran for the turbolift. "McCoy, take the Saucer Section and support the runabouts. I'll use the Battle Section and take the Ziggurat. Stay in touch."

"Aye, sir." McCoy moved to the Captain's seat on the main bridge.

The Battle Bridge of the Discovery looked disturbingly similar to the bridge of the USS Harrier. Essentially it was a similar module modified for use with the Battle Section of the Discovery. I took the center seat and looked around me. Ensign Zuma was at tactical, Mr. Spaat was at the Executive Station. He was acting as my second in command of the Battle Section.

"Captain Hailey to the Phillip K. Dick." I said.

"This is Mendez. Go ahead."

"Pick one of the runabouts that was just launched and pursue it. I want those people in custody.

"This is Doctor Burlington. We have recovered Stephanie and Kamaline from the escape Pod. They are unharmed.

"Captain, We're go for Saucer Separation." The ensign on the Helm said.

"Go!" I said.

There were a few seconds of silence as the seals were double checked. Then, with huge clunking noises that echoed throughout the Discovery the connectors were withdrawn. The Discovery was now two ships.

"The Saucer's engines are firing. Pulling away, now. She's clear." The ensign said.

"Set course to intercept the Ziggurat and engage at full Impulse." I said. The

Battle Section of the Discovery leapt forward unencumbered by the weight of the

Saucer Section.

Stephanie and Kamaline came onto the Battle Bridge. "Report." I said.

Stephanie gave the report. "Roygon was on the Ziggurat. He seemed to be buying our story until we entered warp. Then he imprisoned us and was preparing to use Fast Penta on us. To avoid giving away any secrets, we escaped and left the Ziggurat in a life pod."

That seemed like an adventure to get into later.

"The Ziggurat is preparing to enter Warp." Zuma said.

"Prepare a single photon torpedo with a proximity fuse, Ensign." I said. I didn't want a repeat of what had happened two days ago.

"Aye, Sir." Zuma seemed unfazed by my request.

"The Ziggurat is going to warp speed." Spaat said. "Fascinating. She has attained warp five and is accelerating."

That was faster than that type of freighter should have been able to go. "Can you still hit her, Zuma?"

"Yes, Sir. Permission to fire?"

"Fire."

Zuma hit the button. The Discovery thumped as the torpedo left the tube. The torpedo was boosted to warp speed by our warp drive. It speed across space and approached the Ziggurat. It detonated and disrupted their warp field. The Ziggurat uncontrollably went sub-light.

"Give me warp four for four minutes." I said.

"Aye, Sir." The Discovery casually crossed the space to the Ziggurat.

Kamaline, at the science station reported. "They're cloaking."

"Keep them in sight, Lieutenant." I said.

"Aye, sir."

Soon we approached them. "They're evading, Captain." Kamaline said.

"Stay on them."

"They have switched cloaking protocols. I'm scanning." Kamaline said.

"Ready another single torpedo." I told Zuma. "You'll fire to disable their shields."

"Aye, Sir." Zuma said.

"Got 'em. Am I good, or what?" Kamaline said.

"You're good, Lieutenant. Fire when Ready Mr. Zuma."

"Firing."

Another torpedo thunked out of the Discovery. As it detonated near the Ziggurat, she uncloaked and began to weave around on reduced impulse power.

"I'm reading another gamma spike." Kamaline said. "Heat rising ... There it goes!"

An explosive panel jettisoned from the Ziggurat. The warp core followed. It drifted away and then detonated at least five times as hard as it should have. The light spectrum and energy signature looked all wrong.

After that it was little challenge to take the Ziggurat. She was crippled. Her shields collapsed quickly. The crew that was still aboard her had been hurt or contaminated by the gamma ray pulse of the malfunctioning warp core. Other crew members had been hurt by the powerful blast of the warp core detonating. The Marines took the ship in under five minutes.

I sent a prize crew aboard to take control of the Ziggurat and went to see how the other parts of the Discovery were doing.

The Saucer Section and the Robert Heinlein had taken one of the pirate runabouts cleanly. It had given up when its power core had entered emergency shutdown mode.

We found the Phillip K. Dick adrift with weapons and engines shot off. "Who ever that guy was, he was an excellent pilot." Mendez said.

"It was Roygon." Snoopy said. I had to agree. He wasn't on any of the other ships that we had captured. I wondered why he had disabled the Phillip K. Dick rather than destroying her.

"I don't know." Mendez said thoughtfully. "He had us dead to rights."

-*-

The Ziggurat and its runabout had some scary surprises for us. We set course for Starbase Thirty-Five and towed the Ziggurat there. On the way, Mishimi Miatsu, my Chief Engineer and I dove into the pirate ships. Towing a starship at warp speed is a strain on the engines. In order to keep the strain on the Discovery's engines to a minimum and to give myself the most time, we made about warp four towards the starbase.

The first ugly surprise was that the Ziggurat didn't have two cloaking devices. I thought that it would some how have them linked into the shields of the

Ziggurat on a mutually exclusive cut off switch. I couldn't figure out how that was supposed to work and so I wanted to see how they did it. Mind you, the Treaty of Algeron prevents the Federation from developing or using cloaking devices. That doesn't mean that engineers can't think about them. They make wonderful hypothetical exercises. Then we can apply our hypotheses to the real world and see if our thought experiments help us see Klingon and Romulan Cloaking devices.

The Ziggurat's cloaking device was three separate devices melded into one. It was instantly switchable between three different cloaking protocols. I had no idea how they made it work, but the upshot was the same. Now you see them, now you don't. It was a dirty trick based on the idea that we would not look for more than one type of cloaking device per starship.

None of the three sections of the Ziggurat's cloak was state of the art, which was why Kamaline had been able to break them as well as she did. Applied to state of the art devices, we would never be able to see them. This was a scary technique.

Next the engine core on the runabout was a headache. I had never seen such a core before.

Miatsu helped me to understand it by pointing out how much of it came from the Romulan style of warp core. The Romulans use an artificially created mini-black-hole as the center piece of their engines. Spray some reaction mass, like hydrogen or deuterium on to the mini-black-hole and the mini-black-hole will eat a certain amount of it. The rest it will heat to super hot plasma which you can draw off to power the ship. It was a fantastic idea. I could see several inherent advantages and disadvantages to the system. The best part was that if you lost containment, then you got a microscopic hull breach as the ship and it's mini-black-hole went their separate ways.

The major draw back was that the Romulan ships would weigh about a small mountain more than they ordinarily would.

The engine core of the runabout was a direct fusion of a Federation style engine core and a Romulan core. Heavy gravity generators took anti-matter and fused it, generating heavy types of anti-matter as well as fusion temperature plasma.

When the heavier anti-matter was mixed with heavier matter, that much more energy was released. That was how the probes encountered earlier by the Discovery were able to detonate with such huge yields. They prefused a smaller amount of anti-matter.

These engines were balky and delicate, but when they worked they were much more powerful than comparable Federation engines. They were also more advanced technologically than the Federation could accomplish. With these examples, the Federation could probably duplicate the technology in a year. It would take another year in use before the we understood it well enough to start making any changes.

When I searched the computer for records of who would use these sorts of engines or devices, they didn't match any known technology. The only match was a Federation scientist named Samuelson. He had proposed a similar design, but much less refined in the pre-fusion stages. The project was rejected for funding because there were too many technical hurdles to cross before it could even be evaluated.

Samuelson also pioneered the offensive tactical use of probes. The method of use was very similar to what we had seen from the pirates probes. In war games eight years ago, a fleet using the Samuelson tactics decimated another fleet using older tactics in the first engagement. The second and subsequent engagements were much closer and inconclusive.

I asked Ensign Zuma and he said "It amounts to another dirty trick. If you rely too heavily on tricks, they can be turned against you. The best tactical stance is a solid, aggressive one with plenty of wiggle room to improvise."

I also read that six years ago, Samuelson's daughter had reported him missing. A couple of months later, she dropped out of sight with no traces. There was a notice on that entry to report to Starfleet Intelligence immediately if either Samuelson or his daughter were spotted.

I found it disquieting that the least developed areas of Samuelson's work had been bridged with Romulan technology.

I reported our findings on the "Samuelson" cycle engines to Starfleet Command with my highest codes.

When we arrived at Starbase Thirty-Five, there was a tender there, manned by Starfleet Intelligence. they took the Ziggurat and its runabout into custody and then classified the whole thing.

We went on our way with no idea if Samuelson had been taken by the Romulans or what the connection to the anti-matter pirates was. Another thing we still had not yet figured out was why the pirates were trafficking so heavily in anti-matter. Sure the Samuelson cycle engines would use a lot of power to run, but that didn't explain why the pirates were buying every cubic inch of antimatter they could find on the black market as well as stealing it from every target they hit.

I figured that it was now in the capable hands of Starfleet Intelligence and tried to put it out of my mind...

-end-

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