Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode #51:

The Briar Patch

By

Jay P. Hailey

(Stardate 51309.1)

I woke up slowly, and happily. That worried me for a few moments. What did I have to be that happy about? Then Elizabeth Sheffield shifted next to me and with a strange sense of wonder, surprise and contentment, I understood why I was happy.

I was in bed with a nude woman.

Harsh lights were shining through the bedroom windows of the Sheffield house. Outside, the hologram of a friendly sky was gone, replaced by the gray metal and utility lighting of the cargo deck of a Federation starship.

The colony was packing up and getting ready for landing. Soon the Discovery would be empty inside, passengers and cargo gone.

Elizabeth shifted again and rolled into me. She snuggled in making little happy noises.

I wrapped my arms around her slowly and enjoyed the moment.

Soon she said into my chest, "I have to get up."

I said, "Are you sure?" I had to get up to and return to the mundane life of a starship captain.

She laughed a little bit. "Yes, I'm sure. Although I'm sure that if we stayed here long enough, Theodore would tear down and load the bed into the landing crafts with us on it."

"All while carefully not noticing a thing." I added.

Elizabeth chuckled some more.

Theodore had noticed that his mother and I were sleeping with each other. I am sure he strongly disapproved, but he bent over backwards to be scrupulously polite about the whole thing.

A few more minutes and Elizabeth rolled over and levered herself out of bed with straightforward determination. I spent a few moments oogling her backside and enjoying the idea that it was an effort to get out of a bed with me in it.

She went into the bathroom and started her absolutions. I had to roll over and start moving myself. A lot of the effort was getting out of a warm, comfy bed.

My uniform was all over the floor where it had melted off the previous evening.

I began shambling around slowly, getting my uniform and putting it on with no real conviction.

Someone crept up to the bedroom door on cat feet and tapped lightly. "It's 0900. Time for school."

Alice Sheffield was Elizabeth's oldest daughter. She looked like a shorter, younger copy of her mother. She seemed to genuinely approve and enjoy the idea of her mother and I having a relationship. I didn't really understand that, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Alice crept away, no doubt with a grin at her own cleverness.

I grunted and began to throw my uniform on with some hustle. I was an hour late starting my day.

Elizabeth came out of the bathroom. After I got my other shoe on I moved carefully into her space and grabbed a kiss. We looked at each other for a moment. She looked like she wanted to say something. I dreaded the idea, knowing what she might be thinking about, and I didn't want to cope with it.

I stayed as neutral and open as possible. I can't act worth a damn. All I can do is alter my emotional state from the inside and hope it shows. I was really hoping she wouldn't bring it up.

At the last second, she chickened out. "Have a good day."

I felt my face brighten. "Thank you. Thank you for last night. I'll see you tomorrow."

She smiled herself. Our happy little tryst was open ended and timeless.

I made my escape through cats and kids and some sort of breakfast tossed at me from the kitchen.

We were two weeks out of Beta Howard 223

-*-

The last week up to Beta Howard 223 was a sort of party time for the crew and the colonists who could get away with it. Real work would begin soon for everyone. It would be an open ended thing for the Colonists, but the Starship Discovery was to stay and support the Howard colony until I felt comfortable enough to leave.

So, I found myself on horse back, on a trek across a holographic recreation of the American southwest. The motion of the horse was soothing once you got used to it.

I had invited Elizabeth, but she begged off pleading too much work. I understood that, but I still missed her company.

When I was young, my Mother got into horses in a big way, and I was the beneficiary of the fall out from that. Now, some 40 some odd years later I remembered enough to be dangerous. Fortunately we had a holographic guide who was able to refresh me, and teach the rest of my party how to get along with the horses well enough to get the job done.

Rogan approached me. He was the Commander of a Kurr Association starship that we had rescued. He was very curious about life on Earth. It was at his suggestion that we went on the horse trek.

"This is not the same as the Western Movies we have watched." He said.

I rolled my eyes. "Who told you about those? Those old movies are not accurate historical records."

Rogan looked at me sagely "I got that. It's just surprising how different it is."

"I don't know a lot about this period of Earth's history myself." I said. "Just the once over they gave it in school and what survives in the popular culture. I have been to a couple of worlds where they live in a more primitive style by choice. Remember Reliant's World?"

Rogan nodded "They didn't receive us the way I felt they should have."

"How do you think they should have?" I asked cautiously. Although the Kurr Association underwent forced ethical development, I didn't know how well it stuck when the Harmon released them from their imprisonment.

"With a more open mind." Rogan said softly. When you challenged their preconceptions about their relative place on their world and in relation to the natives, they became very hostile."

"Unfortunately this is a common human trait. Unless enculturated to a more open minded point of view, Humans tend to default to defending their cherished notions to the bitter end." I said.

"What are your cherished notions?" Rogan asked.

I thought about it. "That people are essentially good and that we can make a better society."

Rogan grinned "I assume you will defend these notions to the bitter end?"

I shrugged "I went out of my way for Reliant's world."

"Let us hope that we never discover evidence to contradict your cherished notions."

"Amen."

"Have you ever done this sort of horse back voyage before?" Rogan asked.

"Nope. I have done shorter ones. But this is a first for me as much as for you." I said.

"It is quite a physical adjustment to become used to riding these beasts on a continual basis." Rogan said.

I nodded. "My back isn't the happiest about it. I have been stiff for the last few days, myself. I'll recover. How about you?"

"I am more interested in seeing the Earth you grew up on." Rogan said frankly.

I thought about that, too. "We still have four days left. Would you like to change the program?"

"That would be my vote." Rogan said.

As much as I loved the smell of the horses and the leather, as much as I enjoyed the scenery of the southwestern desert, I found myself agreeing with Rogan. I had been camping out enough.

I questioned the other two members of our party, Stephanie and Kamaline.

"How about we change the program? We could visit the beach at Santa Monica and have a nice house up in the hills." I said.

Stephanie blinked and then nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Please."

"What are you talking about?" Kamaline asked.

"How about I show you?" I said.

-*-

I was lounging on an overstuffed couch looking out a glass wall that overlooked to ocean of Southern California. I had a cool glass of fruit juice in my hand and some soft jazz on the stereo.

The stiffness of the horse trail wasn't going to let go of me that easily, but it was a nice place to recover.

Rogan lounged next to me. "And this is where you grew up?"

"Not specifically." I answered. "It's a little hard to explain, but this is a luxurious place in my home town. Although we don't use money on Earth any more, There are only so many hills like this in the area. So there are ways of allocating them. Stephanie and I never rated this sort of place to live, although if we wanted to, we could visit.

Kamaline came out of the other master bedroom. She was wearing a bikini style bathing suit that flattered her body nicely and a beach robe that was just there to flow nicely as she moved.

"Indoor plumbing is the definition and the measure of civilization," she said.

"Hear, hear." I agreed. Actually I was thinking that bathing suits were the pinnacle of civilization at that moment, but I managed to avoid saying so. Or drooling too obviously. Elizabeth had been changing my point of view about such things recently.

Stephanie came out of the bathroom similarly showered and attired. Her suit was basic white single piece that set off her chocolate colored skin nicely and showed the play of her muscles. I never realized before that Stephanie was slightly taller than me and had quite the athletic figure. Very statuesque. Again I had to control the impulse to drool and yell "Hubba! Hubba!"

"What's on the schedule now?" Kamaline asked.

My first impulse was that I wanted to spend the rest of the day flopped on the couch watching Kamaline and Stephanie, and perhaps a little light reading or something.

Kamaline and Stephanie were younger than that. Moreover, Rogan wanted to see Los Angeles.

"How about we go play on the beach for a bit, then dinner in Venice and back here?" I suggested.

Stephanie took a deep breath. Maybe she was a little more tired than I thought. "I can do that."

Kamaline grinned prettily. "Excellent!"

Rogan didn't seem too unhappy either.

Rogan was one of the Kurr races. I hadn't really taken to time to study how many different ones there were or which was which.

He was dark haired and had a fairly trim body by human standards. Some of the lines and angles were subtly wrong since his internal structure wasn't quite the same. His face was expressive but the over development of the nose/sinus area always made it look to me like his head was jutting forward.

I said "Computer, there in an automobile, a recreation 1963 Cadillac El Dorado convertible in the garage of this house, it's colored pink with white trim."

The Computer beeped to confirm my alteration to the program.

Stephanie looked at me. "A pink Cadillac?"

"I owned one just before I got into the Academy. Sue me." I said.

-*-

The ride down the hill and along Sunset Boulevard was entertaining and comforting to me.

All the old timers were there. The holographic recreations of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and others walked the streets performing their characters for everyone.

Although flying vehicles had been the norm on Earth for over 150 years at that point, West LA still had a decent system of surface streets. Driving along I found it charming and relaxing.

I smirked to myself. It was a big change for me.

"What?" Kamaline asked.

"This place is an anachronism." I explained. "LA won't stop trying to live in the 20^th century."

"Why the 20^th?" She asked.

"Once upon a time, before computers were as complex as they are now, or have been for 200 years or so, Visual entertainment had to be centrally manufactured and then distributed like any product in a pre-replicator culture." I said.

Kamaline nodded.

"Los Angeles was the center of this manufacture and distribution." I said.

Kamaline nodded.

"For a few brief, shining decades, Los Angeles seemed to be at the center of the world. They influenced the culture worldwide at a time when the world wasn't even fully unified. Have you ever met an actor?"

Kamaline grinned "Yes. I have met a few."

"Well, it takes a special sort of ego to get up on stage and present a character for everyone to see, and to believe that you can do it well enough to make people want to sit and watch you do it." I said.

Kamaline nodded. "It was certainly a different sort of thinking."

"Los Angeles had that sort of thinking embedded into its culture." I said. "Like the whole city is an actor. It loved that time when it was important and held the word's attention. It doesn't want to let that go."

Kamaline looked around at the city again. "You make it sound almost maladjusted."

"When I was young I thought it was." I said. "Part of why I joined Starfleet was to escape it."

"Now how do you feel?" Kamaline asked.

"I suppose I have different perspective on culture and history." I said.

"Are you ever going to return to Los Angeles?" Kamaline asked

"Not until they make me. I like being on Starships too much." I said.

There was a flash of multicolored light. I looked behind me and saw a police flyer descending at us. Without thinking I pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the police. I was being pulled over to be given a ticket.

It was inconvenient, but nothing too serious.

The holographic police officer walked up to the car and asked "Sir, do you know why I pulled you over today?"

I looked up at him and was shocked to see a Caucasian face. "Computer, do the Police officer right!"

The officer shimmered and turned into a black man of the same approximate build and size.

"You ran the traffic light at Beverly Boulevard, Sir." The police officer explained.

"What difference does the police officer's skin color make?" Stephanie asked a little harshly.

"It was yellow." I said. I was pretty sure I hadn't violated any traffic laws.

"It turned red while you were in the intersection, Sir." The holo-policeman said.

"Why is the policeman's skin color important again?" Kamaline asked.

"It's just part of the background." I explained. "It wouldn't be right if the ruins of the Empire State Building were down on Sixth Street either."

"Listen," Stephanie said. "It's not right. It's racism."

I turned and looked at her. "I think that's a little bit strong, Stephanie."

"It's judging people's capacities or limiting their available jobs by skin color. That's the very definition of racism." Stephanie said darkly.

"Well, technically, yes. But it was installed as a fix for more real, true and more damaging racism." I said.

"What are you two talking about?" Kamaline asked.

"It's the 24^th century. I think it's time we put that crap behind us." Stephanie said.

"It's a tradition." I countered. "It reminds us of who we are and not to make the same mistakes again."

"It's just keeping the old mistakes alive." Stephanie said.

"Can you explain this to me, please?" Kamaline asked.

"Thank you, Officer." I said, Putting my thumb on his PADD. It simulated recording my identity, and the infraction on my record.

"You have a good afternoon, and drive safely, Sir." The holo-police officer walked away

"Perhaps you've noticed that Captain Hailey and I are not the same shade of color." Stephanie said.

"Uh huh." Kamaline nodded.

"Actually, I like yours better." I said to Stephanie. "You have better variations and highlights in you skin tones. I think it's pretty."

"Thank you." Stephanie said quickly and blankly. She wasn't going there right now.

I put the automobile back in motion towards the beach.

"In ancient times this was used as a basis for discrimination." Stephanie said.

"People with my skin tone considered everyone else inferior, if you can believe that." I clarified.

"There were great and terrible injustices done in the name of this stupid idea." Stephanie said.

"Slavery was the worst." I said "But there were others. For generations in my home land, People with her shade of skin were considered second class citizens."

Kamaline blinked slowly. "You're kidding, right?"

"Not even slightly, I'm afraid." I said.

"I can believe this." Rogan said. "Before the Harmon Englobed my people, we had some member races that practiced this sort of racial abuse of others."

"Well, the recovery from this took a long, long time." I said.

"It's not quite finished yet." Stephanie growled.

"One of the injustices perpetrated during this time was that different areas of the city were allocated to people of different races." I said.

"I think it was more of an informal arrangement based on relative wealth." Stephanie interjected "But the effect was still the same."

"The entire southern area of this city was allocated, one way or the other, to people with her skin tone." I explained.

"They were considered second class citizens." Rogan reminded.

"Yes. But the wealth of the city, taken in taxes stayed centralized and theoretically was used to purchase services which were allocated fairly amongst all the people of the city." I explained.

"But that's not what happened in practice." Stephanie said.

"No, it's not. A lot of the social injustices that were perpetrated from about 1950 to First Contact were based more on relative wealth and misunderstanding of social and economic systems. But because people with Stephanie's skin tone were considered second class citizens, the effect fell disproportionally on them." I said, while focusing on driving.

"The effect was that the black areas of town were taxed to support the white areas of town, while the situation in the black areas of town got worse and worse as time went on." Stephanie said.

"But this doesn't explain the relevance of the Police officer's skin tone." Kamaline complained.

"We're getting there!" Stephanie and I said together.

"There were riots." Stephanie explained.

"Although there were lesser known disturbances prior to this the riot cycles are said to start with the Watts riots of the 1960's." I said. "The black people of Watts rioted, looted and burned. Typical symptoms-of-a-malfunctioning-culture stuff. But at the time they just didn't have the same tools we have to cope with it."

"Then in the 1990's another set." Stephanie said. "The O.J. riots."

"O.J?" Rogan asked.

"O.J. Simpson was a noted resistance leader of the day. He led a protest for civil justice and against the draft which had been instituted for the Eugenics wars." I explained.

Stephanie looked sour. "Actually the situation was a little more complex. I read the files."

I shrugged "I'm better at Klingon History myself. Anyway, in the 2020's the Bell riots Spread to LA quickly, and burned fiercely there, too."

"Each riot has a proximate cause and can be pointed to as an individual event." Stephanie said "This riot was about Martin Luther King Jr., that Riot was about O.J Simpson, the next one was about Gabriel Bell and so on. However, with our better understanding we now see that these riots were simply boiling up and waiting for an excuse to detonate. They were social forces and Luther, Simpson or Bell were simply the sparks."

"Right. And one of the key elements was that the Black People of LA simply didn't feel like they were getting the full or fair benefits of society that they were paying for. Over and over again, anger and resentment were allowed to build up by administrations too blind to see that they weren't doing well by their own citizens." I said.

"Sounds hard to believe." Kamaline shook her head.

"That's because we learned to handle the administration of the city a better way. But that was long after the fact." I said.

"The last and worst of the riots were in the 2050's during Colonel Green's War and the Corpocracy period." Stephanie explained.

"Mayor Simpson, I think she was one of O.J's kids or grandkids issued an executive order after that, that all Police officers were to be black people. This was to ensure that the constant and chronic racism by the white people didn't affect police services." I said, pulling to the parking lot near Santa Monica Beach.

"That was a PR move, pure and simple." Stephanie said. "I don't believe that racism was chronic or widespread amongst the white people of the day."

"It's a simple fact that the Administration of the City had been predominantly white up until that period of time and that the police had been, too. Once that was changed, the social dynamic changed, too." I pointed out.

"The riots of the 2050's were multi-racial and had to do more with the general social breakdown. It wasn't the purely black and white issue that The O.J. or Bell riots were." Stephanie said. "And First Contact happened around that period of time and that changed everything. There's no proof that changing the color make up of the police had any effect one way or the other." Stephanie said. "The original order was that only Latino or black people were to be police officers, but it was changed in the Mexican invasion following the nuke and never changed back."

We unloaded the blanket and picnic out of the trunk and began to walk towards the beach. The smell of the ocean was strong and the sun was comfortably hot seeming to bake through to my soul.

"Well, there hasn't been any rioting since Earth Dome recovered control of the area in the 2080's." I pointed out. "The all black police forces were critical to that and you can't argue with success. For 300 years LA has been at peace and has had an all black police force."

"I honestly think that this can be traced back to the over all social changes on Earth and not to the color of LA's police forces, Captain." Kamaline added.

"New York also hasn't had any serious rioting since the turn of the 22^nd century and their police forces are stubbornly integrated." Stephanie pointed out. "You can't win this argument, I've done my homework."

"You have?" I asked. "It sounds important to you."

Stephanie nodded. "I had a friend who couldn't get into the LA Sheriff's Department because of the color bar. I joined with a group of Deputies, LAPD officers, Life Guards and other metropolitan police officers in an attempt to get the colored rule over turned."

"Were you successful?" Rogan asked.

Stephanie looked sour again. "No. The argument was the same as the Captain just used. LA has been at peace for 300 years and you can't argue with success."

"Is that why you're in Starfleet now?" I asked, spreading out the blanket on the sand.

"Well part of it. Another part was the Borg invasion." She said.

"Tell me about that." I asked.

"We didn't see anything. Nevertheless, they called us in and handed out body armor and phaser rifles and told us to do our best. Starfleet Security had people on the ground out there, too and I admired their professionalism. There was some looting and rioting that day. It was the most action I had ever seen."

"What else led you to join Starfleet?" Rogan asked.

"The day I made the decision I was on patrol and I had just finished an entire box of jelly donuts myself. All my calls that day were routine. Traffic stops like the one we just saw or cats stuck up in trees. I realized that since the Borg invasion I hadn't seen anything worth while, and it had been 3 months. The next day there was a murder. 8 cars showed up just to have something to do. I decided I had to find a more constructive job." Stephanie said. "So far, I think Starfleet's it."

"And LA's police are still segregated." Kamaline said.

Stephanie nodded. "Slavery lasted 400 years. I figure if they hold on to that stupid rule another 80 years or so, and the drop it, It will have been about the same period of time, and that will close out that chapter of Earth's history.

"Enough politics." I said. "Let's rent some boards and go surfing."

We wandered off to find Boards to rent. I found myself oogling the hologram of the pretty girl on the lifeguard tower. I couldn't look at the Life Guards the same way though, after the discussion with Stephanie. They all had the pretty chocolate colored skin.

-*-

I was outside of the Discovery. It was one of the few times I had seen the outside of the ship.

I was floating in a work bee. It was an enclosed seat with a clear canopy. On the back of the seat there was a reaction control system. Under the seat there was a life support system. In the arm rests there were controls and off to each side there were flat displays with navigational and engineering data on the work bee.

Slung underneath my bee there were a pair of waldoes. Large robot arms for working on large objects in vacuum and zero g.

The view out the forward canopy was startling. The Discovery was really a huge ship and pretty one. The Howard planet hung in the back ground like a huge blue-green ornament. I could see almost infinite detail right down to the limit of my perception and sight.

There were two other Work-Bees outside the ship with me. One was Kamaline our science Officer and the other was Snoopy, our security officer with an odd talent for ferreting out the truth.

On the underside of the Discovery's saucer section a dozen flattened domes had been added to the usual shape of the ship. These were the landing crafts. They were shallow cone shapes, actually somewhat reminiscent of the command module of an Apollo spacecraft, except much, much larger. The colony carried for so long in the saucer of the Discovery had been broken down, folded up and stowed in the landing crafts. Like the Apollos they were one way vehicles. They were designed to make it from the Discovery in orbit down to the planet and to land safely once.

I originally thought the idea was odd. Why use these sort of things when the Discovery had plenty of cargo transporters? True the transporters would require more time and energy to do the job, but we had them anyway. The answer was simple. The Howard colony had no guaranteed source of refined metal for quite some time after their initial settlement.

The landing crafts were designed to be dismantled and recycled into the Infrastructure of the colony. Viewed this way, an odd and somewhat clunky design made a lot more sense.

We'd been at Beta Howard 223 for two weeks already. Everyone was calling it just Howard by now. The first in scouts and the initial settlers had reported all was well and the old El Aurian scouting reports were still accurate and relevant to the planet.

Now it was time for the landing crafts to undock and begin their entry and landing on Howard.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1" Lucas McCoy counted down. He was the Discovery's Ops officer. Today he was also traffic control. "Launch number one."

There was a brief whoosh of air and tiny flecks of debris from the edge of the first dome. Slowly, it started to move out of its conical pocket in the Discovery's saucer.

At walking speed, the four story tall landing craft edged away from the ship. It slowly and gracefully continued to open the distance. I touched the controls on my work-bee and began a fly around of the craft.

It had Federation civilian space craft markings. I thought that was odd, for a moment but then forgot about that and looked over the craft itself. It looked factory fresh and not a single piece out of place.

"This is work-bee one to Landing craft one." I said.

At the top of the cone I could see the two pilots through their fairly large windows.

One looked and grinned at me. "Landing One to Work-Bee One, How are we looking?"

"You are looking good." I said "Not a hair out of place."

Kamaline chipped in "This is Work-Bee Two, everything looks fine over here Landing one."

"This is Work-Bee Three." Snoopy said "You look like a go from here, fellas."

"Then let's take this puppy home." The pilot said. "Landing One to Discovery, request clearance to enter transfer orbit."

"Discovery here." McCoy answered "You're cleared. Happy landings Landing One."

"Roger." The landing craft slowly heeled over when it was pointed right it seemed to just drive away. It was very prosaic.

We returned to position for Landing Two and repeated the process.

-*-

Snoopy had called it quits and had gone inside to be replaced by Lieutenant Pilat from engineering. I was having too much fun.

The last of the landing crafts was getting ready to go. This was the end of a very long day.

Landing Craft Number Eight had been damaged during a battle with the Kliges'chee earlier in our mission. It had a large cut through its underside.

The landing craft had been emptied of everything that had survived the attack. All the material and people slated for Landing Craft Eight joined the lines at the transporters.

However, LC Eight still represented resources in term of metal, power generation and impeller engines.

When it undocked I noticed much more of a puff of air and material. It separated and I began my fly around. There were holes in it patched with replicated metals and sealers.

"Discovery, this is Work Bee One. That repair looks about good as can be expected. I hope this thing works." I said.

"Noted." McCoy said. There was silence while he checked with Elizabeth. "We're going to try it anyway, Work-Bee. Are we good to move this into its trajectory?"

I looked at it carefully. There was a dim red light in the cockpit; showing empty seats deactivated control panels. No one was aboard LC Eight It would be landing itself under automatic pilot controls. This cut down on the risk. Its targeted landing zone was some distance from the main colony landing site, to avoid a disaster.

Landing Craft Eight drove away from the Discovery about the same way the others had.

I dawdled about going back aboard the Discovery but in the end my bladder just wouldn't let me stay out.

As it turns out it was a good thing we were careful with Landing Craft Eight. We watched by scan from the main landing site as the craft completed reentry, went subsonic under good control and then failed to pull out of it's rear-first plunge. We just hadn't recovered enough of its engines to provide enough lift.

Telemetry indicated that several jury-rigged impeller engines failed under the load.

It went straight into the ground and scattered itself around a small crater in the forest near the colony. If absolutely necessary the Colonists might recover some mangled strips of metal from the wreck

-*-

The area the colonists chose reminded me strongly of Southern California. It couldn't make up its mind whether or not to be a desert or a scrub forest or grassland.

The colony was perched on a plateau between the foothills of a large mountain range and the slope down to the sea. They were close enough to the sea so that it moderated their temperatures but not so close that they'd get swamped in a hurricane.

As I sparkled into existence on Howard, I almost involuntarily said "ahhhhhh" Fresh air and real sunlight on a planet's surface will do that for you if it's been a while.

Eleven of the large cones were arranged in a large circle on a piece of the plateau that wanted to be grassland. There was an empty space for the late, lamented LC Eight.

The Landing Crafts were beginning the process of disassembly. Already I could see one of the products of that. A rough Air-Truck made from one of the drive units off the LC was hauling cargo from the LC to where it would be set up.

I approached the site I was told was the Sheffield plot. There were Elizabeth and the kids all working hard at reassembling the house. Except for Woody of course, one of the more charmingly self centered creatures in all existence. Carol the eleven-year-old was also not present. Obviously she'd been tapped to entertain Woody and keep him distracted from the fact that something was getting more of the families' attention that he.

"Good afternoon." I said.

Elizabeth looked up and grinned a grin that put Howard's class G yellow star to shame. "You're just in time." She said.

I blinked. Well of course I was. "Please tell me you have lemonade." I said taking off my jacket.

"In the replicator." Elizabeth said, waving a piece of the prefab house at the container that held a lot of their belongings and folded down house.

"Right. Let's see what we have." I said diving in.

Assembling large prefab structures isn't hard when you have anti-gravs, but it takes a knack. You have move slowly, deliberately and thoughtfully to move heavy pieces. They don't weigh anything but they do still have inertia.

I had to be patient with Theodore and Alice. Theodore didn't especially want to listen to me and being young they both wanted to throw everything together in a large hurry.

The foam-crete slab was a little more work and a little more fun. We all got to write our names in it before it hardened up.

We managed to get all the pipe runs and conduit runs set down correctly according to the drawings. As far as I could tell they matched the old locations when the house had been set up in the Discovery.

The most tedious and difficult work was digging. The trenches for the pipes and the septic tank had to be dug. With power shovels We got most of that done in the day

By that evening we were within half a day of starting assemble the Sheffield house on its new slab.

Then we attacked the cooking of dinner. This turned into a big party. It was a big friendly camp out. The Elizabeth and the kids were living in tents for the first few days until they had the house complete enough to live in.

After a dinner of fire grilled replicated whatever we sat around an honest to ghod fire and talked. Neighbors visited, and off in the distance we could hear singing.

After a day's hard labor everyone was ready for bed. The smaller kids dropped in their traces, and the older ones either wandered off to find out what the interesting (meaning teenage) people were doing, or went to bed.

Elizabeth and I took a walk. Dogs barked incessantly. Many of them were deliriously excited to be out in the real world again. Others were newly thawed from cold sleep and had at least two years of barking to catch up on.

We walked out a short distance away from the colony site. There were some reports of predators in the area including a nasty analog to the rattlesnake, so we didn't go far. Just to a rock outcropping outside the settlement. I examined it carefully but apparently the rattlers of Howard don't like people any more than the ones in the American Southwest do. The rock outcropping was uninhabited. It was nice place to sit and talk and stare up at the stars.

The view of the night sky from Howard was if anything only marginally inferior to the view from the bridge of starship.

"I have something I'd like to talk to you about." Elizabeth said.

I steeled myself. We'd been avoiding this conversation for several weeks. "Go ahead."

"We're building something here on Howard. Something very important. Something a lot bigger than any individual, but individuals will have their parts and their contributions."

"The New El-Aurian Home world." I said. The thought sent shivers down my back. It was really an exciting project. As exciting as any single planet could be.

`Yes. We're hoping to make it a more forward-looking sort of place. A place more about reaching out and building." Elizabeth said. It was clearly very, very important to her.

"Building a dream." I offered.

"Yes. I think you'd have a lot to contribute to that Dream." She said.

Then before her momentum could desert her, she said "I'd like to invite you to stay with us here."

I looked at her. She was beautiful. Energetic. As smart as anything. Part of me said that I was an idiot if I passed this woman up. It was right.

"Elizabeth. I made a promise. An implied promise. There are three hundred people in orbit above us and I promised to do my best to get them through this voyage and home." I said.

Elizabeth nodded. "I understand about responsibility, please believe me. If you were to leave the Discovery would that really be that bad? I think Commander Mendez could do almost as good a job for them as you do."

"Thank you." I said. I knew Mendez would do better than I could. However, it had been put on me. "I promised."

She turned away from me and took a deep breath. "Okay. If you can make your way back here then the offer's still open. It will be for a long, long time. I won't wait for you. Howard isn't going anywhere, but I'm living in real time, you know?"

"I'm sorry Elizabeth." I said feeling like a total heel.

She turned back, with a forced happy look on her face "For what? You never promised me anything. Don't apologize for being true to yourself."

"Okay." I nodded. "I won't."

We began to walk back towards the partially completed Sheffield house.

I noticed a moving star in the sky. It was the Discovery. I looked at her for a moment. "I've been down here all day. It's time I should be getting back."

"Must you?" Elizabeth looked at me with a look I can't describe but that promised heaven.

"Ahhhh" I said.

"Your comm-badge still works. They'll call if they need you." She said grinning.

"You talked me into it." I grinned back.

-*-

We finished the Sheffield house in about three days. Pretty good for a bunch of amateurs camping out. I'm told pros can have the pre-fabricated houses up and ready to move in a single day.

I saw Snoopy and Kamaline and most of the crew at one time or another. Commander Mendez set up watches and was releasing people to come to the surface of the planet in large droves.

Eventually I forced myself to beam back to the Discovery. I wasn't ready to let go of being a Starship captain yet. I was betting that my data work was measured in tens of thousands of pages by that point.

-*-

I walked into the Sheffield house. It was taking on its normal appearance, except that outside the windows was a real planet, not the holographic projections of the Discovery's cargo bay.

Carol, William, Woody and two children I didn't know were on the front porch engaged in a game. Telephone. "The salt is sentient on Saturday." Carol said.

"Assault everyone Saturday!" Woody boomed with a voice much louder than you'd expect from a boy that size.

Carol rolled her eyes "Woooody! Knock it off or I'm telling mom!"

"You knocked up a frog!?" Woody said to the hilarity of the rest of the children.

Carol looked very mad for a second, then her face changed. With beatific smile she said "Tickles."

Woody was up and running with admirable speed. Not fast enough. Carol used her reach to snag one of Woody's feet. He went face first into the composite deck and screeched like he was being eaten by a love sick mugato.

"Excuse me." I said mildly. Even in a melee with Woody I knew I didn't have to raise my voice. Carol would hear me. "Is your Mom in?"

Carol flipped Woody over and dug her fingers viciously into his side. Woody squealed and curled up. "Ah hah! Ha ha ha! It's big and little now! Isn't it?" Carol said.

Woody's language was not printable. He had an admirable command of invective for someone of seven years old.

"Inside," Carol said in between bad words. She seemed to be playing Woody as a bad words instrument, a touch here for the F-word, a dig there to be called a bitch and so on. "In the living room with some geese."

The kids of the El-Aurian colony called the Starfleet Officers geese. It was a contraction of "goose stepping nazi" a term that thankfully went right over their heads.

I went inside.

Elizabeth was sitting in newly arranged living room with a handful of people from the Discovery. There was Lieutenant Commander McCoy, Snoopy, Ensign Spivy and a couple of people from engineering.

"Hello, Jay." Elizabeth smiled at me. "Have you come to listen to my pitch?"

I smiled insincerely. "May I speak to you alone?"

Elizabeth's smile flashed a hint of evil. "Certainly." She turned to her guests "If you'll excuse me."

We adjourned to the hallway in front of the main staircase.

I turned to Elizabeth who was looking at me with her biggest, bluest eyes.

"What in the hell are you trying to do to me?" I asked.

Elizabeth smiled more widely. "I am trying to convince the crew of the Discovery to stay here with us."

"How am I supposed to get the Discovery back to the Federation? We're shy of crew people as it is!" I had to work hard to keep my tone conversational.

"That's not my problem, Jay." Elizabeth said. "You Earth people are genetically compatible with us. 700 people is really cutting it close in terms of genetic diversity when trying to set up a long term colony. Your crew has been carefully selected for specimens of intelligent, healthy, imaginative, stubborn survivors. I'd be an idiot to turn any of that down. Any individual from the Discovery who joins the colony magnifies my colony's chances for survival."

"And it cuts my chances to get the Discovery home." I said.

"If it becomes too risky, of course you're all welcome to join us here." Elizabeth's smile was positively feral. I felt like a mouse when a cat has a good lock-on.

"We only live a fraction of your life span, Elizabeth, Who would want to have short lived children?" I asked.

Elizabeth touched my lips. "That problem is self correcting. As long as Colonists breed with crewmen, the average life span evens out at just a smidgen less than the El-Aurian average on home world. Our calculations show this happening within three generations, assuming the genes are mixed as evenly as possible."

"I promised to get the people home who wanted to get home." I said.

"Are you going to force the people who want to stay to man the Discovery on her way back home?"

"No. We're not a prison barge any more. I won't have anyone on the ship who doesn't want to go. All I can do is to ask you to stop trying to cut my throat here." I said.

Elizabeth shook her head. "No. Everyone who elects to join the colony is a win for me. If I manage to force all of you to stay, then that's a big win for the colony."

I sighed heavily. "Okay. Play it your way."

"I always do."

-*-

Lucas McCoy walked with me over to the beam up point.

"She's got you pretty bugged, if you don't mind my saying so." McCoy said.

"It's that obvious, huh?" I grinned.

"Yes, Sir." Lucas grinned back. "Sorta gives me hope."

"So, are you going to stay with the colony?"

Lucas looked up into the sky. "I've been in Starfleet since I was a boy. There's still too much left out there to see. Besides," he looked around "All due respect to these people. I'm not the dirt under my fingernails type."

"Nor am I." I said.

"It's a pickle, alright."

"How are we doing?" I asked.

McCoy picked up my inference. "We'll lose some people, but mostly it's the people you would have guessed would go before we got there."

"Kamaline?" I asked.

McCoy grinned and shook his head. "She's not the dirt under her finger nails type either."

-*-

The next week Justin Foote found himself in temporary charge of the colony. The El-Aurian colonists had taken to using a fairly strict order of seniority. Foote was the second oldest member of the colony, behind Latimer. The sole exception was Elizabeth who's force of personality made up for her relative lack of years.

Elizabeth was off on a scouting mission, and here Latimer was setting off with a crew and a team of horses to re-supply her.

Justin grinned to himself. Latimer looked at home on the back of a horse in the rough beta cloth work clothing. He looked like he'd just ridden out of an old Earthly western movie. The cowboy hat didn't hurt the image.

Justin recalled the heyday of the movies on earth and western movies in particular. Latimer looked like an El-Aurian John Wayne. Justin knew that somehow Latimer had been there too, because he loved the resemblance.

"Just like the old days." Latimer said.

"The old days for us were third empire starships and the duck blind at the Savoy Hotel in Chicago." Justin pointed out.

"For the people who used `em." Latimer clipped.

Hearing the undertone, Justin realized that Latimer was sincerely enjoying his chance to play cowboy.

"Watch out." Justin said gravely "I hear the Injuns are restless this year."

Latimer grinned and he turned his horse and nudged it into motion towards the distant foot hills.

-*-

Stephanie Anderson came up to Justin. "Mr. Foote, I'm having a problem."

"And what problem is that?" Justin smiled at her. He expected to hear her talk about a conflict of conscience about joining the colony.

"I've been trying to raise the Discovery for the last hour and I'm not getting an answer." Stephanie said. "I wonder if you can find anything out."

Justin nodded. "Come with me and we'll see." Justin led the Discovery crew woman out onto the deck attached to his newly assembled house. There was a respectable five inch reflector telescope.

"Do you have your tricorder handy?" Justin asked.

Stephanie handed he device over to Justin. Justin activated the data link and as he looked at the screen the tricorder crashed. The programming in the Starfleet device was obliterated by a message from the starship.

Justin blinked a couple of times but managed to keep a poker face on.

"Hon, your tricorder is broken." Justin said handing it back.

Stephanie looked at the device sourly and began to try and fix it. "I have one with hard wired programming up on the ship. I didn't think I'd need it here."

Justin nodded. "I see no reason why you might." The looking at the stars for a long moment Justin made an informed guess about where the Discovery's orbit would carry her. He looked into the finder scope of his telescope until he could see a shiny reflective surface and then looked through the main telescope.

The Discovery was adrift and beginning to fall out of her normal attitude in orbit. Justin could see no light from the ship's nacelles or impulse engines. The normally brightly lit ship seemed almost dead except for dim red light in the windows.

Justin sighed and stepped back. "There's the Discovery. Something is, indeed wrong."

Stephanie looked through the telescope. "It looks like someone turned the lights out on her. Why is she tilting?"

"She's adrift in orbit." Justin explained. "The standard orbit you were using should have been a stable one, but if the ship looses helm control then her heading will drift all around."

"What in the hell could neutralize a starship so thoroughly?" Stephanie asked.

"I don't know." Justin lied.

"We'd better start to make some plans in case who ever did it comes for us." Stephanie said. Justin could see her get a little pale under her chocolate complexion.

"Any advice you could give us would be greatly appreciated." Justin said. "I'd better go catch Latimer so he can bring Elizabeth back."

"I'll start organizing the crew. What do you want me to tell the colonists?" Stephanie asked.

"Calbert Jones is in charge `til I get back. Tell him what you saw and to get the people prepared to evacuate. But since we haven't seen anything else, we'll hold off on running away until we know what we're running from."

"Yes, Sir." Stephanie said. She moved off.

Justin sat for a moment and then looked through his telescope once more at the crippled starship. He shook his head "Dena, Dena, Dena."

-*-

It was late the next afternoon when Justin caught up with Latimer and his party. Justin cheated and requisitioned one of the air-trucks.

As the craft settled onto it's landing legs, Justin went out to meet Latimer.

"I have some bad news." Justin said.

"What's up?' Latimer said.

"One of Dena's bombs went off." Justin said.

"I thought you cleaned them all up." Latimer said stiffly.

"I thought I had, too, but there was a reason Dena was the chief hacker of the mission. The Discovery is crippled in orbit. Even Starfleet equipment here on the ground is crashing when they try to talk to their ship." Justin explained.

Latimer shook his head. "If we get lucky, Elizabeth just got her wish of absorbing the Discovery crew into the colony. If we're not lucky we just opened a serious can of worms."

"You better get up there and tell Elizabeth." Justin said.

"You're the one with the flying truck." Latimer said.

"I have 37 Starfleet people on the ground back in the colony. I have to keep them too busy to notice that this was our bomb or else." Justin said "Besides. If this is the one I am thinking of, The worst case scenario still has them taking almost the whole two months to get to the fix."

"I hate waiting for the opposition to get lucky." Latimer said. "It makes me nervous."

"Maybe Hailey's used up his supply of luck."

"Maybe, but I hate to bet serious stakes on sentiments like that."

"Good luck and we'll see you in a week or so." Justin said returning to his truck.

"Yeah. And good luck to you." Latimer said.

-*-

I was in down in the bowels of the Starship Discovery, closing off a plasma conduit. It was good old-fashioned Engineering work and ordinarily I would have loved it. However, it was the third day of the crisis and I wasn't loving anything at that point.

Emergency lighting was all I had to work with. Hand tools also. Ordinarily a simple command to the ship's computer would have closed the plasma conduit and made it completely safe.

However today the computers were the problem. Every networked computer and device in the Starship Discovery was shut down by some very nasty Meta-Program. Like a virus, only worse this programming was doing it's best to rewrite the Discovery's operating system. It was having enough success that nothing else worked at all.

The Discovery simply didn't blow up on the spot. It was an engineering miracle I recalled that one of the original first six Galaxy class starships had been lost to a computer failure. The Discovery was actually a Galaxy Class, release 3.0, and that saved us. She had mechanisms in place to safely shut things down in case of massive computer failure.

However, getting the Discovery restarted was another matter. The computers on the Discovery were never, ever designed to be turned off. They could be rebooted by a simple set of commands but even that happened in real time while the computer was running. The commands of the meta-programming were so insidious as to even defeat the reboot command.

So we had to seriously and truly shut the Discovery down and re-start her in a specific sequence. All we had to work with a few personal computer driven devices and records pulled from the hard-wired backups. They weren't enough to try and design a restart sequence of that complexity. Nevertheless, we were giving it the old college try. By the end of the voyage every one on the Discovery would be a qualified Starship Engineer. I didn't know if that was good or bad.

The lack of people really hurt us. The Discovery's crew was only 300 people in a Starship intended for 1000. The extra space and carrying capacity left room for 700 colonists. Now the Discovery had landed the Colony. With the Computers down we couldn't even call down to the planet for help. Not that we could have brought anyone from the planet up to the ship. The same meta-programming that corrupted the ship effected all the shuttles. Therefore, we were stuck with who we had. About 260 people.

Which is why I found myself down in the bowels of the ship doing routine Engineering work.

Svorak, one of Ambassador Soren's assistants came into the jefferies tube I was working in. "Captain Hailey." Svorak was a typical Vulcan, built on the long, lean, dark haired mold. He was dressed in a casual Federation civilian business ensemble, done in an odd set of browns and golds with green paisley highlights. Although his clothing was beginning to show some wear and dirt he was still immaculately groomed and trim. Leave it to Vulcan to ride out a disaster looking freshly pressed. Some times I envied them that. I was just the opposite. I can make the most immaculately tailored and designed formal wear look like I've slept in it for a couple of days in the first five minutes of wear.

"Good afternoon, or whenever." I said. "What can I help you with?"

"I believe that Ambassador Soren and I have discovered a clue as to what has happened to the Discovery." Svorak said, Handing me a Vulcan PADD. "The relevant data and reports are in this device."

I nodded and changed position to get comfortable. Then I looked at the PADD. The report was short and got directly to the point in the style preferred by Ambassador Soren.

I read about the Starship Yamato's fatal encounter with an Iconian base in the Romulan Neutral Zone and the subsequent near loss of both the Enterprise-D and a Romulan Warbird to same problem before Captain Picard destroyed the base to deny the technology to the Romulans.

I looked up after reading Admiral Picard's summary report to see Svorak still standing there waiting for me.

"Yes, Mr. Svorak?" I prompted. I hate people reading over my shoulder.

"That PADD is mine, Captain. I will need it when you're finished, in order to continue my work with the Discovery's computer." Svorak explained mildly.

"Oh." I said. "Thank you. Then let's find some place more comfortable while I read this."

"I am fine, Captain." Svorak said. I thought I heard an undertone of smugness. Vulcans culturally had greater personal discipline. If Svorak thought it warranted he would stand there in a stance approximating parade rest for a couple of days.

"I would prefer to be more comfortable, thank you." I said.

Svorak nodded. I thought I caught a slight tone of relief. He would have stood there at parade rest for a couple of days. He wouldn't have enjoyed it.

Eventually we made our way to an auxiliary lounge near main engineering and I read further.

The Iconians were a technologically advanced race some 200,000 years ago. They were referred to as "demons of air and darkness" presumably by the people who wiped them out in a catastrophic war.

The Iconians had confirmed examples of "Instant Elsewhere" technology. Iconian Gateways used dimensional doorways which allowed people to walk from one planet to another light years away with no crossing of the intervening space.

Either this threatened Iconian neighbors so they launched a pre-emptive war, or the Iconian used the technology against their neighbors provoking the war. Little evidence survived to the modern day to tell me.

Admiral Picard and his crew saw such a gateway in operation and even used it themselves so we had good evidence that they were possible.

I idly wondered if this is what inspired Charles Holly to create his mad devices.

The Iconian computer programming was an ugly surprise. Federation computers did very nearly the same thing as Iconian computer systems. They attempted to interface with everything. The Iconian system assumed a certain computer and software architecture and inserted itself into unknown computers trying to add communication links to the over all Iconian network. If it had worked it would have been a treasure trove of Iconian historical information. However, its assumptions about Federation and apparently Romulan computer systems were critically wrong. The effect was highly, highly destructive to both types of systems.

The Enterprise-D was able to save itself by performing a running reboot, systematically erasing all Iconian data and programs and restoring files from hard wired back ups.

Our problem was not quite so straight forward, although it was similar. Some of the safety mechanisms in the Discovery were safeguards against Iconian programming. Once warned, Starfleet programmers were able to design protections that kept the Iconian programming from having it's terrible effect. This enabled them to actually recover some Iconian Programming and study it, resulting in even stronger safeguards.

There was no way that Iconian programming could have had such a devastating effect on the Discovery. In fact we had examples aboard that had been used by our science staff to enhance our sensors.

I stopped. This had been done at the suggestion of one of the El-Aurian Colonists. The El-Aurians knew of the Iconian Programming.

Suddenly the source of the problem became much more apparent. I had expected some sort of sabotage by the El-Aurian Colonists. This was worse than I expected. Somehow they had upgraded the effect of the Iconian programming.

Demons of Air and Darkness.

I got a chill. I never really knew what form the confrontation between the interventionist and non-interventionist factions of the El-Aurians had taken. However, I recalled one critical thing. The planet Beta Howard 223 had been the colonists idea. Once they had been defeated as an interventionist group, they lobbied hard to come all the way out here and make a new start. A new colony far away from the Federation or non-interventionist El-Aurian oversight.

I handed Svorak back his PADD. "Do you think what I think?"

"I have no way of knowing what you think." Svorak said blandly.

"I think that the Colonists may have something down on the surface of that planet that they don't want us to know about." I said.

"If that is the case," Svorak replied "they seem to have prevented us from acting quite thoroughly."

"Maybe." I said. "The archive you drew this from. Does it contain copies of the Enterprise-D's sensor logs?"

"I seem to recall that it does." Svorak said.

"Let's go check this out." I said.

"Fascinating." Svorak said.

-*-

The best lateral sensor array available was on the aft facing, at deck 42. It was the best because while adrift tidal forces pointed the heaviest part of the Discovery at the planet constantly. Relative to the plane of the Discovery's orbit we were flying nose out and listing nose up at about 30 degrees. The heaviest parts of the Discovery were her two warp nacelles and they anchored the rest of the ship in orbit.

All around the edges of the ship were lateral sensor arrays. They functioned from a very simple principle. Two eyes are better than one. Three eyes are better than two. The Discovery had over one hundred lateral sensor arrays, each figuratively an eye with a handful of different functions.

Combined and with the data properly integrated they could mimic the effect of a single sensor antenna the length of the ship. They were wonderfully flexible and adaptable senses for the Discovery.

Of course with all the computers down they were so much overly complicated dead weight.

I hoped I could use a single array.

Along the way I stopped and grabbed one of the dozens of holographic hard coded archives. These crystals were artificial diamonds that used each molecule to hold a hideous amount of data. The ones on the Discovery that year were cylinders that fit in the hand and weighed two and half pounds.

Then I stopped at the arms locker near Engineering and grabbed a phaser rifle. Svorak raised his eyebrows at me. "Trust me." I said, "I know what I'm doing."

Svorak nodded once, some how implying that he'd believe it when he saw it.

Then we walked into the back end of the ship. I often wondered why there wasn't another shuttle bay at the tail of the Galaxy's battle section. There was plenty of room for it and the big flat plane of the nacelle yoke to stack it on.

On the other hand, we had three shuttle bays that were good mostly for gathering dust and creating work for maintenance crews. I didn't think we'd launched a shuttle or a runabout for nearly a year prior to the debarkation of the colony.

The nacelle yoke was about two decks thick. One deck in the middle was where we walked and could get to all the conduits and SIF runs in the thing. Above and below were half decks containing all the working machinery. At either side of the yoke there were the ladders that went into the nacelles themselves. Those rooms were very rarely visited in the Discovery. All the controls were automatic.

At the very back a turn away from the phaser rooms there were the access tunnels for the lateral sensor arrays. It was the very basic Starfleet corridor of that era, a rectangular configuration with rounded edges. The corridors were unusual mainly in that they were straight, not curved as we were used to seeing.

Generic doors lined the aft side of the corridor. We went into the first one on port side.

This led into a hexagonal chamber. Out the back end was the sensor array itself, layers of sensitive material, cameras other more exotic sensing devices. These fed optical cables that came through pass throughs in the hull into the room we stood in, filled with control and data processing equipment to add the one eye of this sensor array to all the others.

Then we went to work. The most important thing Svorak and I had to do was to isolate the array utterly from all it's neighbors, the data network it tied into and the main computers. The array must not receive any information from anywhere else in the ship period except what Svorak and I carefully hand fed it.

Since this directly contradicted the designed purpose of the array, which was to act in concert with it's fellows invisibly adding it's data to what we saw on the out put side of the network, isolating it took a while.

I noticed it was warm in the compartment. We were right next to the outer hull there and the changes in temperature of outer space between direct sunlight and shadow were beginning to affect the life support.

I kept working anyway. There was nothing for it.

I was packing TKL rations and water from the emergency stores. The Discovery like all ships had dead spaces. Areas that for design reasons had no use or occupation. In all starships these dead areas were searched out and eliminated in the design phase. Once that occurred and the design was frozen invariably some of the dead spaces would survive and more would be discovered. These were crammed full of survival tools, equipment and especially stabilized food and water rations.

We could live for a couple of months on emergency rations and stored water on the ship. Then, like it or not we were joining the Howard Colony. I had double-checked the escape pods. Their hard-wired instructions were intact. If necessary the crew could bail out and land safely on Howard. Once that was done though, getting the Discovery back was a lost cause.

I lost track of time. I worked until I was hungry and then I ate a snack of emergency rations. Actually I sort of liked them myself, something that put me solidly in the minority. Once I found myself nodding off, so I left Svorak to continue the work, followed the signs to another stash of emergency equipment, broke out a blanket and some cold weather gear to bundle up as my pillow and I took a nap.

Some time later I woke up. I discovered survival clothing in the pack. I changed my uniform for shorts and a t-shirt and got back to work.

I figured we were somewhere in day four or five of the crisis. I had utterly lost track and of course the main computers controlled all the clocks aboard.

Eventually the array was isolated. I plugged my own tricorder into it. I bought the device when I was first assigned to the USS Harrier what seemed at least three life times ago. In a fit of paranoia I had its operating system and several useful applications hard wired and installed. My tricorder could not be altered from a distance or told to feed me false data without some subtle programming, and that could be defeated in a moment simply by turning the tricorder off and then on again.

Then I hot-wired the Phaser rifle into the actual array as power source.

My tests worked well. Essentially I had turned the lateral sensor array into a giant antenna for my personal tricorder. I was able to read the planet in good detail.

"Now the fun part." I said.

"I was having fun already." Svorak said with a perfect deadpan.

I blinked at him. Was he joking with me or did he enjoy this sort of engineering puttering as well as I did?

"At least, in so far as I understand the term." He qualified.

"Ah." I nodded. "Anyway. What we have to do now is use the sensor logs of the Enterprise-D in the archive here, to build a filter to install into my tricorder so that if it's seeing any Iconian artifacts, it will sound an alert and draw them to our attention."

Svorak held out his PADD "This should suffice to create the filter."

"Thank you." I took his PADD and plugged the archive into it. Then I turned it on and started a search for the proper files. The buttons the Vulcan PADD manifested were frustratingly small, and marked in Vulcan fonts, importing English letters. "Is there a better way to interface with this thing?" I asked.

"It can be operated and programmed by voice command." Svorak said. Half a beat later "In Vulcan."

I looked at him. "In Vulcan."

"Yes. Modern Vulcan has been rigorously rationalized and rendered logical. There fore it is a superior language in which to speak to a computer." Svorak pointed out.

I sighed and started telling the PADD what I wanted in halting, difficult and probably horridly accented Vulcan.

-*-

It was very late in the day before we had the filter finished. My head hurt and my mouth felt about the same way my left hand did when I tried to do right handed things with it.

`[Your Vulcan has improved today.]" Svorak said.

"Thank you." I said in English. It felt funny. Modern Vulcan has a hard time framing the concept.

With the filter complete, I installed it in the tricorder and ran it.

Then I discovered, to my horror how slow my tricorder was compared to the Discovery's main computer. "Scan in progress. Estimated time to complete scan, 4 hours, 12 minutes 46 seconds. 0% complete."

I took the opportunity to grab another nap.

-*-

I woke up, ate a hearty meal of emergency rations and then tried my level best to take a sponge bath with the moist towelette included in the ration pack.

Two more days without sonic showers and I figured we'd start seeing the first cases of assault. There were similar emergency arrangements for the toilet. It was unpleasant but it worked. At least for a while.

I went to the lateral array compartment to find that Svorak was curled up sleeping nearby in much the way I had, padded by emergency clothing.

An Ensign came found me. I tried to recall his name.

"Sir, I have a report from Commander Mendez." Ensign Adkivornak said.

Who could forget a name like that? "Go ahead Ensign Adkivornak."

He smiled and said "Commander Mendez reports all secure on the bridge. Visual observation shows no ships or crafts in our immediate vicinity. No hostile action noted. Work is continuing on recovery of the saucer section's main computer core. Lieutenant Commander Miatsu is worried that without the SIF fields active the hull of the ship may be deformed by tidal stresses in orbit. He is attempting to confirm or deny this hypothesis now. Ensign Waller from medical reports that your cat misses you and hates emergency rations but will eat them eventually. Doctor Burlington wanted me to call you an idiot for getting us into this mess, but reports that other than exhaustion from over work, the crew is in no danger currently. All networked equipment is still down. Main engineering says they're 50% of the way to safe shut down and beginning the cold reboot of the main engineering computer. Lieutenant Commander McCoy has Saucer Section Impulse reactor #14 working at 15% power by manual control. He says this should stabilize life support and some emergency systems."

I nodded taking these reports in. "Tell Commander Mendez that I appreciate his efforts on the bridge and will join him there when circumstance permit. My orders stand. If he perceives a problem that requires action to solve he is to solve it using his own initiative. Tell him also that I have gotten a sensor array working and am scanning the planet for clues to the solution of our problem. Tell Ensign Waller to pet the cat more and feed her less. Tell Doctor Burlington that she should watch her own level of fatigue closely as well, and Convey my thanks to Lieutenant Commander McCoy, I'd like to see how he did that when he can spare the time to take notes on it for me. Take my compliments to Lieutenant Commander Miatsu. His professionalism is second to none in Starfleet. Anything else?"

Ensign Adkivornak shook his head. "No Sir, That should do it for this half of the day. Will you be here if Commander Mendez wants me to carry a reply to you?"

"Either here or I will pass through main engineering as I go elsewhere." I said. "Dismissed. Thank you. Ensign."

"Thank you, Sir." The young man turned and left. I sighed. Youth is wasted on most Ensigns.

-*-

Kamaline came into the area. "Hi! You said you had a sensor working?"

I grinned at her. "You could hear it calling to you."

"Hey, I'm the science officer." She said. Kamaline looked odd. We were all getting a little greasy after several days, and Kamaline was no exception. She also looked as enthusiastic as ever. As if we were all camping out again and it was some grand adventure.

I pointed out my tricorder to her. She was just in time. It was about 5 minutes away from completing the scanning pass.

Kamaline looked at my tricorder and boggled for a moment. "You turned the array into an antenna for your tricorder?"

I nodded "It's the only way I can think of to keep the scanning programs intact while I try to use them.

Kamaline started to giggle. Then it became a full out belly laugh. She laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

Svorak got up and calmly rose to his feet watching Kamaline. I looked at him. He looked at me. He raised his eyebrows. I shrugged.

Eventually Kamaline got a hold of herself. "Hee hee." She said wiping tears out of her eyes. "Carlos has Spaat and Snoopy prowling the decks with binoculars looking out the windows. One of the two sets is a real old fashioned frame and lenses deal."

I nodded "Who had those?"

"We're so screwed." Kamaline said. "I can't believe how up the creek we are."

"We'll get ahead of it." I said. "One way or the other."

Kamaline just looked at me. I could see the fear that she was sitting on start to take hold.

"Trust me. We're getting there." I said. "Keep working and before you know it things will be on the way back to normal. We're going to be okay."

Kamaline wanted to believe me.

"Remember that I used to do this for a living. I'm a Starship Engineer. I know what these ships can do and what the people can do who work in them. It's going to be fine."

Kamaline took a deep breath and calmed herself. "Right. What are we looking for?"

"Iconian ruins." I said. "I figure that the Colonists may be sitting on something down there."

Kamaline shook her head "It's not Iconian Programming that's got us down. I read the file after Ensign Kitaen came up with her new sensor algorithm. We own that stuff today."

"Who suggested that she use the Iconian programming as inspiration for the algorithm?" I asked.

"Dena Foote. But this isn't Iconian Programming."

"Remember Agricorp and Colacorp? Who screwed the computers over then?"

"That was Dena again. But she's not even here."

"The Colonists were working this thing before we even got involved. What if Dena Foote designed a new set of Iconian style programs using Federation programming languages?"

Kamaline got an angry look on her face. "Then I vote we set course back for Reliant's World and issue her a regulation ass kicking."

"I'll bear it in mind. You know the Iconians had dimensional doorways?"

Kamaline blinked. "Which dimension?"

"As far as I know only this one. But the effect is an interstellar ranged transporter."

Kamaline shrugged "It would make getting back to Earth a lot easier."

"They've been exiled because they want to take over the Federation. A quick walk to Earth and back here would make them essentially untouchable."

Kamaline smirked "I think Elizabeth would find that much more difficult than keeping her zoo in line."

"Lieutenant, I suspect that about half the technology on this ship has been influenced to one degree or another by the El-Aurians. Twenty years ago, Elizabeth and Aaron apparently owned Starfleet's procurement department. That means wealth and power. Lots of it."

Kamaline thought about it. "So how did they end up here?"

"There was an opposing faction that had the right people's ear. Apparently a few high placed people and the cooperation of Starfleet helped put an end to their run. That time." I explained. "Now imagine trying to stop them when they can move from planet to planet instantly and unnoticed."

Kamaline nodded "I can see your point, Captain. I still don't think the Federation is centralized enough to be seriously threatened that way. The Federation is like herding cats. 150 planets generate 1,500 directions to run in. There's simply no way to dominate all of it. There aren't enough hours in the day."

"Elizabeth could live for another thousand years." I pointed out.

"No Human or Vicharrian could live that long, but Earth and Vichar will. And trust me, our worlds will still be generating insanity and crises at a greater rate than any one person could stay ahead of in a thousand years" Kamaline said.

"Your Science Officer is correct, Captain. However one area of the Federation is vulnerable to the sort of power play you describe." Svorak added. "Starfleet."

I thought about it. "Okay. Would having Starfleet taken over and used to the interventionist ends be any better than having the whole Federation taken over?"

Kamaline stopped and thought abut it for a while. "I don't think that having Starfleet be so centralized is a good thing. That's not the immediate concern. Keeping the El-Aurians from taking advantage of that is the immediate concern."

"Right."

"So how do we do that without a Starship to work with?" Kamaline asked.

"Good question." I said. "When I have an answer, I'll let you know."

Just then the tricorder beeped to let us know that it was done with the scanning pass. I picked it up.

"There do seem to be some Iconian signatures present. I think that's an energy source, there." I said showing Svorak and Kamaline the Tricorder.

Kamaline looked at the tricorder and shook her head. "You've made mistake. Look at those density readings. That's not possible."

I looked at the readings. I was noting a reading that indicated power being generated and electronic devices in use. Then I looked at the actual picture of the surface. It showed a regularized shape. A sort of stepped ziggurat down in a valley. Then I looked at the comparative density readings.

Water is the usual measure of density equaling one. Rock averages 5 - 7 points on that scale. The rock near the ziggurat was reading 12 - 20 points of relative density. The ziggurat itself was reading somewhere in the region of 100,000 times the density of water, a density you won't find usually outside the cores of stars and large gas-giant planets.

I blinked a little at the readings. Then to compare I checked for life forms in the area of the scan. They were present although blurry. I found a human life sign. I knew this was one of the colonists, actually an El-Aurian. Sure enough he registered approximately 1.0 on the density scale, only a smidgen denser than water due to his bones.

I checked the local trees and fauna. They registered about right, too. I showed the results to Kamaline "The humans and wild life in the area register right. So does the water. What am I missing?"

Kamaline looked at the scan again. "I don't know. I'd have to look at the filter you used."

"Hmm." I widened the area of the scan. The geology scan showed the area around the ziggurat was weird. It was in some foothills but the valley itself was a circular depression. About half of it was a lake.

Under the area the density reading was still off. Apparently the ziggurat was standing about in the center of a giant basaltic plug shaped like an ice cream cone. The reading of the generated power showed a warm tube extending down through the center of the plug and away into the depth of the planet. Suddenly I realized what I was looking at.

"It's been fortified." I said.

Kamaline and Svorak looked at me. "Excuse me, Captain?"

"Our scans didn't penetrate the material on the building so we have no idea how deep it is. If the scan is correct, what if there a molecule thin layer of this ultra-dense material on the building?" I asked.

"The weight involved would still be huge. How do you get material to stay this compacted? Kamaline asked.

"I don't know. Look at the geology scan. The thing is riding on a plug of dense volcanic rock." I pointed out. "You can see a core tap there for the power."

Kamaline nodded. "That's if you're guessing right and the scan isn't corrupted."

"If that material is present it would be very effective armor." I said. "The Discovery would be hard pressed to put a dent in it."

Kamaline shook her head. "There has to be a mistake. If you could make ultra-dense material like that, wouldn't force fields work just as well?"

"This stuff would be passive and require no energy to operate. It couldn't break down." I said. "Force fields can."

"Do you mind if I double check your filter, Captain?" Kamaline asked.

"Please feel free." I said. "I need to have this stuff confirmed. Send a runner for me when you know."

"Where will you be?"

"I have to go hold a briefing with Commander Mendez." I said.

Svorak raised his eyebrows. "I believe that I shall assistant the Lieutenant."

I nodded "I don't blame you." The bridge was 42 stories of ladders and jefferies tubes above us. "Send word when you get a result."

"Sure thing." Kamaline said.

I packed up my survival rations and tools and left, leaving my tricorder with Kamaline and Svorak.

Svorak explained to Kamaline "Since Modern Vulcan is a logical rationalized language, it's logically superior for computer input."

"Oh, is that right?" Kamaline asked sweetly. I smiled to myself. Svorak was about to have a learning experience.

And so was I. I got climbing.

-*-

I made it to the bottom of the Discovery's neck nearly a day later. It hurt. Badly. I climbed 20 stories before my arms and legs just gave out. I curled up in an out of the way storeroom and slept for quite a while.

Fortunately the emergency medical kits had this miracle drug called "aspirin" which dulled the pain enough for me to stretch out and get back into climbing.

What was worse was that T'Sing the Vulcan Doctor checked in on me from time to time. She was a Vulcan in her late 20's. Which for Vulcans is still the first blush of youthful adulthood. About 19 to 23 in human terms. T'Sing was no longer the socially awkward girl she'd been when the Discovery started out. She appeared for all the world to be a slightly outsized porcelain doll. Vulcans are naturally somewhat stronger than humans. So T'Sing was easily able to catch up with me, hold long conversations while spidering up and down the ladders at a breath taking rate.

"How do you feel?" She asked me.

My shoulders screamed at the thought of another rung, but They had been doing that for days. My knees really advised me to loose a lot of weight now. The truly disturbing thing was the rubbery quality of my large thigh muscles, which I was depending on to move.

I took a careful breath. Breathing was a skill taught in most athletic classes and my own distant flirtation with the Martial arts had included some of the knowledge. I recalled everything I could about that to help me. About two and a half hours into my climb it felt like my lungs were going to seize up. However, by now it was tolerable.

If I wasn't mindful, I couldn't talk for panting. So I sucked a careful breath and said "Fine, Healer. This isn't about fast, it's about consistency of motion." I made another rung.

The word "consistency" almost got me. "S" noises lend themselves to panting more, evidently.

T'Sing nodded. "I must be frank. I have a concern." She said this easily while sliding up the rung behind me without a thought.

"I have many." I said. I took another careful breath and levered myself up one more rung. Only ten more decks to go! "What's yours?"

"I am worried that this climb may not be in the interests of your best health." T'Sing said.

"Having the Discovery crippled isn't the best interests of anyone's health." Breath. Breath. "I'm working on it."

"Perhaps we could hold the briefing in a more centralized location?" T'Sing suggested.

"As a usual thing," breathe, one more rung "Starships are commanded from the Bridge."

"As a usual thing the Bridge is more accessible. Would the Battle Bridge, perhaps be a more appropriate location? It is after all, more centrally located."

I had made all the arguments to myself hours ago. Now it was a matter of pride. T'Sing treating me like I was delicate simply made it worse. "I'll be fine, Healer." Breath. "If you want to help," breathe, one more rung "then get a copy of Soren's report to the bridge." Breathe, breathe. Vulcan names also suck when you're winded.

T'Sing nodded slightly and asked, "Which report of Soren's?"

"Iconians." Breathe. One more rung.

T'Sing was reluctant but went anyway. I focused back into the climb. One rung at a time.

Then I realized. I was being immensely brain dead.

-*-

The Airlock cycled and I stepped out on the Discovery's outer hull. I had magnetic boots and safety lines. I also had a small maneuvering unit. The airlock hatch was at the base of the Discovery's neck, the section that joined the Battle Section to the Saucer Section, just behind the main forward Photon torpedo tubes. I had to use a mule, a small electric motor designed to turn emergency access handles easily. The Discovery's airlocks had emergency opening and closing handles that depending on mechanical leverage based on the screw to function. Without the mule it would have been a good deal of work to open and then close and cycle the airlock.

EVAs weren't too common in Starfleet. I served on the Discovery for more than two years and hadn't been outside three times in the whole term.

I still winced at the thought. I blithely went and climbed twenty decks by ladder and gangway, working against the Discovery's internal gravity the whole time because I basically forgot that I was on a starship in orbit.

If word ever got out, I'd have to turn in my golden Chief Engineer's wrench.

I turned aft and made a small thrust. At walking speed I drifted over the secondary hull of the starship Discovery. I peeked in windows as I passed and saw the crew busy at work.

Then I stopped and rotated again. I was out from under the Saucer and now could thrust upwards relative to the orientation of the ship.

At walking speed with no effort, I drifted another twenty stories upwards.

Then when I was basically level with the Air lock on the aft side of the command module of the Discovery I halted my upwards motion, turned and moved forward.

As I drifted I looked at the stars, the planet Howard and the hull of the starship Discovery. She appeared relatively smooth skinned from a distance, but up close I could see recessed handles which allowed access to various hull mounted devices. I could see writing, warning space dock construction and maintenance crews of various dangers or necessary procedures.

I could also see some dirt and other minor degradations suffered by the Discovery since the last time we left a sizable Federation Starbase, long behind us on the far side of the Klingon Empire.

As I drifted up to the bridge hatch I could see people in the lounge one deck below grinning and waving at me. I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way and waved back.

I saw a crewman run to go get Commander Mendez and let him know who was knocking at his door.

I made contact with the hull and my magnetic boots stuck fast. I attached the mule to the handle and cranked the door to the Discovery's airlock open.

-*-

I was sitting my Ready room and enjoying that a lot. My body was informing me that I would pay and pay. I didn't listen. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later.

"The El-Aurian Colonists may be sitting on an Iconian Teleporter." I said.

Mendez quirked his head "A what?"

I explained the outlines to him. "There's more information coming. The Colonists must have had a filter in the computer's output to keep us from seeing it."

"That doesn't sound good. There's not much we can do about it with the Discovery in this shape." Mendez said.

"We have to get down there and start contesting ownership of that thing." I said. I felt like I had already climbed from the Planet to orbit, one rung at a time.

"We can't afford to take anyone away from the recovery effort." Mendez said. "We're too close to the point of diminishing returns now."

Kamaline tapped on the half open door and slipped through. She had my tricorder with her.

"I have a couple of new scans." She said.

I blinked. "How'd you manage that?"

She smirked "You were most of the way there. I just used your tricorder to jump start the Sub-processor attached to the array. It's not too fast but it's a lot faster than your old tricorder."

"Smart ass." I growled "And what did the scans show?"

Kamaline handed me the tricorder. "There wasn't anything wrong with your scans. There's a building down there. It may be clad in ultra-dense material."

"That's almost as bad as the stable einsteinium." I said.

"Not quite." She said. "I think once it's compressed in a high enough gravity field to engage the strong nuclear force. That force may stay engaged even when the gravitic compression is removed."

"Lot's of maybes there." I said.

"What do you want from 20,000 miles away with a tricorder? Bring me a sample and I'll be able to tell you something about the stuff. However, I know the building is heavy. That valley is a subsidence effect. That basalt plug it's resting on is sinking."

"Wow." I said. "How long until it goes under?"

Kamaline shrugged "It's hard for me to say. I didn't take it past any of ship's Geologists. They're all busy banging the ship's computers with rocks. I'd estimate another 200,000 years at least."

"That's not soon enough." I said.

Kamaline and Mendez looked at me.

"You want to destroy it?" Kamaline said.

"We can't let the Colonists have it." I said. I didn't realize until that moment that I was very, very angry. I said the colonists but I was thinking of Elizabeth.

"Perhaps we should investigate the matter first. We don't know for certain that this artifact is Iconian, if it is Iconian, we don't know if it contains one of their interstellar teleporters, and if it does have one we don't know if it still works." Mendez said. "And most importantly we don't even know for sure what the Colonists are doing with it, if anything."

Kamaline shifted uncomfortably. "We know that there's energy being generated. And we know that there are five El-Aurians there."

"They played us for fools." I snarled. "They've been two steps ahead of us this whole trip and I am tired of it! Doesn't it make you mad? I'm a Starship Engineer," I pointed at Kamaline "You're a crack Starfleet science officer," I pointed at Mendez, "You're a talented Starship commander who's name is spoken in Starfleet Command. And we're sitting here with our thumbs up our butts because we didn't notice them hacking our damned computer!"

Mendez shifted uncomfortably. Kamaline smothered a grin.

"We spent two years having Br'er Rabbit and that briar patch played on us, and didn't see it coming until the lights went out. We're lucky the Colonists didn't hurt themselves laughing at us!"

"Br'er Rabbit?" Kamaline asked.

"A folk tale from my home land." I explained. "Br'er Fox catches Br'er Rabbit and is about to eat him. Br'er Rabbit says, `eat me, maul me, but what ever you do, don't throw me into that Briar patch! Br'er Fox has been outsmarted and humiliated by Br'er Rabbit for years thinks that if whatever's in the briar patch is scarier than Br'er Fox then that's what he wants to inflict on Br'er Rabbit. So Br'er Fox chucks him into the Briar patch. Well a briar patch is thick and has many thorns. Br'er Rabbit is small enough to move between the plants and be unharmed, but Br'er Fox can't go into the briars without getting ripped to shreds. Br'er Rabbit once home in the briar patch is perfectly safe."

Kamaline snickered. "That's a cute story. I like it."

"It would appeal to the Vicharrian mind set." I said. "But do you see my point? We've been played for suckers every step of the way."

"Are you sure this thing isn't a tar baby?" Mendez asked.

I stopped dead. "You know that would be just the thing to do, too wouldn't it?"

"A tar baby?" Kamaline asked.

"Tar is a substance found on Earth. It's black and terribly sticky. Br'er Rabbit saw Br'er Bear coming along and so constructed a Tar baby, a humanoid form made of tar. When Br'er bear saw the tar baby, Br'er rabbit, from hiding pretended to be a child trapped in the tar and called for help. Br'er bear seeing an easy meal attacked the tar baby only to find himself in a sticky mess."

"Then by that analogy the Computer is the tar baby." Kamaline said. "We're distracted with this crisis. By time it pays off either the El-Aurians will be where they want to be, or we'll be where they want us."

"You don't think this is a delaying tactic?" Mendez asked.

"I think they're trying to delay us past the point of being able to stay on the Discovery." Kamaline said, "The damage done to the main computer is immense. The Discovery will literally never be the same after this. It's blind luck that we had as many hard wired devices as we do, or we'd be really stuck."

"How many do we have?" I asked. I thought I was being clever by importing my own devices.

"Umm. About 60 of them." Kamaline said. Ensign Bartlett collects tricorders and about a third of his collection survived the meta-programming. Stephanie has a Starfleet issue tricorder that she had me hard wire. I thought she was just being paranoid. Go figure. Snoopy bought a hardened tricorder, three PADDs, and a disruptor from Kalak's Starbase just before we left Klingon Space. Some people like you had personal equipment and some of them even thought to defend them against this sort of attack."

"When we get the ship back, I want isolated tricorders and PADDs scattered through out the ship. I would also like a plan for doing a cold reboot of the ship developed. I have never seen a computer failure so thorough before, but I don't want to get caught with my pants down again." I said.

"We're already working everyone at maximum. I'm sorry. The Discovery will get back up when she gets back up. I can't get us there any faster." Mendez said. He looked like hell. I could tell he'd been pulling a lot of long shifts himself.

I sat up and looked out my window. Howard looked like an ornament hanging of our stern. I stared at the planet. I could almost reach out and touch it.

"There has to be something we can do to monkey wrench the Colonists until we get the Discovery together." I said.

I thought about it quite a bit.

-*-

Mendez came into my office a couple of days later. I was doing a set of stretching exercises and regretting it. However, I had to work the kinks out of my muscles or be crippled for what I planned to do next.

"Captain?" Mendez said.

"Carlos, I have a plan for monkey wrenching the El Aurians." I said. "But it's risky."

"Tell me." He said.

"First I have to make some preparations." I said. I went to my desk and pulled out a rank pip. It was borrowed since the replicators weren't working.

I went to Mendez and pinned the fourth pip on his uniform. It was one of the open circle ones, not the solid ones. The rank was parallel to Lt. Colonel in the Marines. Starfleet doesn't use a rank at that level. "I am breveting you to Junior Captain."

Mendez looked at me for a moment. "Junior Captain?"

"What I am going to do has a lot of potential pitfalls. If the worst happens I want you to have the command clearances and authority to get the Discovery home."

Mendez shook his head "That's not necessary. Commander is a valid command rank."

"There's a lot of space between us and home. I want you to have the tools to do the job right getting there. You'll have to decide whether to try and take Rogan and his crew to the Kurr Association, and be able to treat and conduct diplomacy on behalf of the Federation. Besides, We both know that you're better at the whole Captain thing than I am."

Mendez sat down heavily. I could tell he was tired. "Okay. Now tell me what you have in mind, Jay."

I told him.

He looked at me. "This has you that bothered?"

"Doesn't it have you bothered?" I asked.

"The potential for harm to the Federation and Starfleet has me bothered. The sabotage to the Discovery has me bothered. But I think that perhaps you're taking this a little too personally." He said.

"I'll admit that I am mad. I feel hurt. I thought I had a good relationship with Elizabeth and her family. Better than this. There's something else going on here. Do you realize that we're in a scripted moment?"

Mendez looked a little confused. "Scripted how?"

According to Elizabeth's plan right now you and I are carefully considered what to do. In one track we're deciding whether or not to abandon ship. If the Sabotage has gone as well as Dena Foote promised then we're realizing right now that we're behind the curve and that we won't get the Discovery back on line before the life support endurance runs out."

Mendez looked grim. "That's still an open question."

"I know. The second track goes like this: We'll get the Discovery back. Now we must decide what to do about the Iconian installation. One decision has us fill our fists and beam down as many people as we can to contest the ownership of the Iconian installation. The other decision has us withdrawing and attempting to carry a warning back to the UFP and the Big El-Aurian Game is now in over time and that we're behind."

Mendez nodded "All this makes sense."

"That's my point. I am betting Elizabeth has carefully thought through each track of decision making and has responses ready for each of them. Probably ones that would constrain our available options badly."

Mendez nodded again "She has us over a barrel."

"So we change the rules of the game. We do something off the map. Something that doesn't make as much sense except in that it changes the rules." I said.

"You're right. We've been put in a box and it's time to get out. Your plan even has several things to recommend it. For instance, no one sane would see it coming. However, you're hardly the best able to carry out this plan. Stephanie or the Marines would do it better."

"They may be more capable, Carlos, But I'm the one most responsible." I said.

Mendez looked me right in the eye. "No one understands that better than I. Permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead." I said.

"You do one thing that makes you good at this job and that limits your duration for it. You take things too personally. Everything goes straight to your heart." He said. "You owe it to me and the crew to make wise decisions and not risk yourself unnecessarily. You put me in a terrible position of having a control contest with the Captain or letting the Captain act like a loon. I can't do either one."

I nodded. "I'm the one who's responsible and it's my decision to make. We have to roll some big dice to break this thing loose."

"You keep rolling. I just hope I don't have to pay up when you roll craps."

"That's why I'm going and you're staying here."

Mendez stood up and shook his head. "Well if you have to do this, at least have some fun with it. You only live once, after all."

My mouth was dry just thinking about what I was considering doing. "Sure." I rasped. "Fun."

-*-

I was down in Marine country. It was a rare visit for me. They had barracks and equipment set up for the constant training and education they underwent.

The Marine Uniform that year was the traditional olive drab fatigues style. The Marines stuck with it for centuries and showed no sign of changing. There were baggy pants and baggy jacket festooned with pockets. They had standard Starfleet Comm-badges and enlisted rank pips.

I found Sergeant Major Kendricks in the wardroom with an equipped squad of Marines, on alert and ready for action.

The other squads were doing impromptu on the job Engineering training. I suppose Kendricks changed them out periodically.

"Sergeant, I'll need to get to the surface with a squad of Marines to take and hold an Iconian Installation. Can you arrange the equipment?"

Kendricks looked at me. "Aye, Sir. If we can get to the shuttle bay we have landing crafts, as well as standard shuttles. What can you tell me about this Iconian installation?"

I shook my head "The shuttles are disabled the same way the Discovery is. We'll have to bail out."

That got the Marines' attention.

"Sir, did you say you want to bail out of the starship to assault and hold an Alien installation on the ground?" One of the Marines asked me. He was grinning and his eyes were shining.

"Yes. Do you have the equipment?"

"Now, hold on a minute, Sir. Do know what's involved in bailing out of a Starship in orbit? A Ballistic re-entry?" Kendricks asked. The weight of his regard was palpable. This was no business for anyone who was less than competent and very secure in their abilities.

"I've been orbital sky diving." I said, with a straight face. It surprised me how well I lied to the Sergeant Major. I said it like it was a common hobby of mine. I had done it exactly once and it scared me so bad I was pouring piss out of my boots for a week.

I didn't have time for that sort of thinking right now. The El-Aurian colonists had the installation and who knew what they were doing with it while the Discovery sat crippled and dead in orbit.

"Orbital sky diving, huh?" Kendricks was prepared to be derisive.

Another Marine spoke up. "It's basically the same thing, Sergeant, Except for the gear."

"Yeah, but in Civilian Orbital Skydiving, no one's shooting at you." Hendricks said.

"They don't have ground to orbit weaponry. The shooting will probably wait until we're on the ground." I said.

"Orbital Skydiving, huh?" Kendricks looked at me. He held the look for about ten seconds too long. Then he said, "Get kitted up Marines! We're bailing out! You and you, help the Captain get kitted up."

-*-

The orbital Sky diving suit was a basic space suit with ablative armor on it. For mobility's sake the ablative armor was layered in plates all around it. It was a little heavier than a normal suit, and somewhat stiffer. I was no stranger to space suits and EVAs, as an engineer I had done them routinely before my assignment as Captain. The Orbital Skydiving suit was not as bulky as the double shift engineering EVA suit, but then it wasn't expected to last as long either.

The kit contained camping and survival gear for the planet's surface. It was specialized for the scrubby forest region we were diving into. The parachute itself was the size of folded up napkin, made from monomolecular wire finer than any spider silk. It still seemed too small.

The maneuvering unit was much smaller than I was used to. Good for only a few shots, it wasn't designed to allow lots of freedom of orbital movement. It was just sufficient to get a diver into the atmosphere grazing orbit he needed. Physics and physical adeptness would do the rest.

The most intimidating part of the kit was the Marine Corps weapon of the day. It had a suspicious resemblance to a WWII era rifle. This wasn't an accident. The stock looked like black plastic but it was stabilized crystalline silicon/plastic. A Klingon swinging a Bat'leth with his whole body behind it would scratch up the long plastic stock, but wouldn't break it.

The metal fittings were less complex than a bolt action rifle, but no less tough. They armored the standard phaser rifle workings until the thing was durable and trustworthy under the harshest of battlefield conditions.

There were lugs to fit a bayonet. The bayonet was eight inches long itself and serrated along the back edge. It turned the Marine weapon into a fearsome close combat weapon. Marines properly trained and drilled could hold their own against Klingons wielding all sorts of medieval cutlery. Which was the whole point.

I got one and checked it out. The cell was full and the targeting system was good. The bayonet was present in a holster and properly sharp and deadly looking. The control panel that was on the left side above the trigger allowed me to set the power level. It accepted my combination and signature locked the Phaser rifle to me. It wouldn't do too much good if someone took the rifle and stuck me with the bayonet, but I suppose it was something.

The weapon was stored for re-entry in a slipcover covered with ablative armor of its own. Then it was very securely strapped to a 70-pound field kit that contained all sorts of very useful things for a soldier in the field. Since we didn't know how long it would be before we could expect the Discovery to be operational enough to retrieve us, we carried full kits.

"Sir, is the communications system still down?" Hendricks asked me.

"Yes, Sergeant. We'll have no Comm-badges until they crew gets the Discovery up." I replied.

"Then take this." It was a wire wrap around headphone style of communicator. I appreciated it. Not only did they work on their own set of frequencies, the little wire microphone allowed us to whisper and be heard over the unit.

I put it on and then set my helmet on and dogged it down. I was kitted up.

-*-

I used one of Snoopy's Klingon PADDs and passed it around. "The Iconian Installation may have an interstellar teleporter, Which would allow the Colonists unlimited strategic movement. They have already tried to take over the Federation once, and if they get the Iconian Teleporter working they'll try it again. We'll insert into the area of the ziggurat, and then we'll take it and hold it until the Discovery gets back on her feet and can support us. If the situation becomes too stiff, we'll withdraw into the valley and conduct a campaign of harassment until the Discovery can come to our aid."

"If the Colonists are the enemy why not conduct a direct attack on the colony, Sir?" One of the Marines asked.

"Good Point. Attacking the ziggurat plays into the enemy's mindset of taking and holding the objective. If the objective is to deny the ziggurat to the Enemy then attacking their home base with hit and run attacks will divide their attention and draw their resources away from their objective, while avoiding the strength of their defenses." This was Kendrick's chief Corporal. A bloodthirsty woman, evidently.

"I want to leave the colony in place and intact. And as many of the people as we safely can." I said. "Phasers will be on stun. I want to deny the colonists the Iconian teleporter. I didn't spend two years trucking these people out here, only to shoot the hell out of them and cart the survivors home as refugees."

The Marines nodded. A couple looked sour.

Kendricks stood up straight. "Corporal Malaca, did you understand the Captain's mission parameters?"

"Yes, Sergeant!" She stood up straight too. She turned to me. "Aye, Aye, Sir."

I nodded gravely. "Very good corporal. Thank you for your input. Keep it up. Now let's go."

-*-

We stood in the smaller of the two shuttle bays that occupied the Discovery's large neck. Sergeant Hendricks had us all line up. I was approximately in the middle of the line.

Then we linked up with standard EVA safety lines. Typically though, they were all colored olive drab.

I had already double-checked the seal of the inside of the bay, and it was good.

Two engineering crewmen opened the shuttle bay doors with "mules". The air in the shuttle bay started out a whistling torrent out the door and ended a mild breeze flying away from the ship.

The space suits puffed and began to ride a little differently, the main sensory cue that we were in vacuum.

We stepped carefully out onto the hull with magnetic boots, and once again I was looking at the Discovery from the outside. The warp engine nacelles rose above my head like skyscrapers and the planet rotated away above my head.

"Okay, we'll do this gentle. I am in the puller's seat until I tell you to cast off. Then you're on your own." Sergeant Hendricks said. We all rogered.

He said "Turn off the magnetic boots." We did so. I stayed roughly where I was, since I didn't want to move too much. A couple of the Marines started to drift away from the hull at a very slow rate of speed.

Then Sergeant Major Kendricks drifted away. I saw that he had a maneuvering pod from the Shuttle bay. He moved very slowly until we were all strung out in a line pointed towards the starboard side of the Discovery.

We began to drift away at an ever increasing rate. The g-force of the acceleration made me feel as though I were hanging from a magically suspended a Marine Corps Sergeant several places up the rope from me.

The acceleration ended and Kendricks said "We're in the right orbit. Cast off. Mind your heads up display and try not to be too late firing your retros."

The Marines on either side of me cast off their lines. I cast off my line and the slowly wind milled my arms until I could see the Discovery, receding at a pretty good clip

-*-

Moving towards the planet involved about 20 minutes of apparently hanging in space. The detail of the planet was startling as we got closer I could start making out individual hills and clouds. All at once my monkey brain could make out the clouds and understand just how far I was above it with no visible means of support.

I had a bad moment of vertigo and acrophobia at that moment. I was so far up it wasn't even funny, but I wasn't going to stay there long. Eventually the moment passed and I could really appreciate the view. It was beautiful and I realized what I had been missing by not doing this more often.

The Marines had spread out and were barely visible as points in the distance.

The heads up display in the space suit alerted me that it was time to start getting ready to re-enter. I quickly got into the right orientation flying back first along my path and when prompted I fired my maneuvering pack's retros.

Then came about five minutes of hell wondering if I got it right before I felt the first gentle push and the hint of an orange glow. Then I recalled what I hated about Orbital sky diving. I was plummeting with no control what ever into the atmosphere of Howard at such a rate of speed that I was squishing the air into plasma ahead of me. Very hot plasma.

During this re-entry I could expect to take up to four Gs of buffeting and kicking around. Unless I screwed up the retro burn. Then I could expect to take anywhere from 16gs to instant splatter house. I had no way of knowing if I was in a good trajectory until I survived the re-entry.

I was told that expert Orbital Sky Divers can tell and can even steer themselves to a limited degree. I was nowhere near that level of skill. I simply had to relax, go limp and ride it through.

I was committed to a giant super hot orange fist and it was going to do what it was going to do.

I felt my mouth go dry as I was gently pushed into the orange cloud.

The Pack separated from me and drifted above on the end of a very durable wire. It could easily take the heat of re-entry. It reeled out an unreasonable distance and then seemed to hang above me, whipping and occasionally getting slack or pulling hard.

The orange glow increased. So did the buffeting. I curled up and tried to make a rounded surface out of my back to make a more stable shape. I held that most of the way down, but when I slammed in to thick air I was just smushed into a sort of flattened half crouch.

As I plummeted deeper and deeper, I could see bits and pieces of the ablative armor flying off the suit. They looked huge. That was the scariest part for me. The ablative armor was designed to take the energy hit and fly away. However, if the balance wasn't just right, I'd run out of armor before I ran out of re-entry and that would result in a deep-fried Jay P. Hailey, about my least favorite dish.

So each flake or burning section that rolled off my back or legs had me worried of that was too much and here comes the burning.

-*-

The orange cloud left me and I was down. Not all the way down on the ground, but I was through the transition from being in orbit to plummeting in mid air over the ground. Again I suffered a serious bout of Acrophobia and disorientation. I saw orange sparks all around me fade out as the Marines made their own transitions.

"Check, check. Sound off and let me know who's still with me." Sergeant Major Kendricks said over the Comm.

All of the Marines sounded off in various states of euphoria. I waited until the end and then said in my best Astronaut deadpan "This is the Captain. I am through re-entry and fine How are you Sergeant Major?"

"Five by Five, Captain. Glad you're still with us, Sir." Kendricks said.

Then we returned to radio silence as we all went subsonic on our own terms. For me it was bad. As I approached the mach barrier from the wrong side, the pressure built unevenly until I was spinning like a top in mid air. I kept my focus on a single piece of ground, which helped me keep my spatial orientation, but was uncomfortable on a whole different level since I could see the ground getting visibly closer. What was left of the ablative armor came flying off in burned and chewed up looking chunks. I trailing a tail of charcoal through my tumble.

My tumble became truly random as I passed through Mach with a huge double bang. Most of the armor that remained came off at that point.

I stuck my hands out and went limp and soon enough my attitude straightened right up.

"If God had meant us to fly, he'd have given us ailerons." I thought acidly to myself.

Fortunately I didn't throw up. From there it was literally all down hill as I equalized at terminal velocity and proceeded to plummet at the ground like a de-orbited monkey.

The pack didn't hit me on its way past but fell gently to the end of the line and hung there. It had a higher terminal velocity than I did.

Fortunately the automatic altimeter worked, and popped my parachute at the right time. The one thing I didn't remember at all was where the ripcord was for a manual deployment. That would have been embarrassing.

It was a blessing enough that even though I did land in a tree, that I was able to get loose from the parachuting rig myself and didn't have to call the Marines to come get me down.

-*-

The landscape looked a lot like The Angeles Crest area just north of Los Angeles. Scrubby bush forests and lightly scattered trees with loots of ground cover. It would have been nice to be out in the fresh air, except that I was afraid that an any moment a Colonist would leap out and yell "aha!" Or worse shoot me.

I stripped out of the ruined re-entry suit. It was a one shot deal and looked used up when I took it off. Limp and burned out appearing.

Then I got over to my pack and took it out of it's own re-entry armor.

The first thing I did was to take out the Marine corps weapon I'd been issued and check it. It was fine. It had just been dropped out of Starship and plummeted to the ground but it was fine and ready to shoot things. I realized that so was I.

I put on the Marine fatigues I'd been provided and transferred my rank pips and badge over. I discovered that I was still wearing a very ripe and now sweat soaked hot weather t-shirt and shorts from the emergency kit. I put the fatigues on over that. I got out my personal tricorder and my personal Phaser as side arm and attached those appropriately. The tricorder would be useless for a while. Sergeant Major Kendricks was carrying a jammer. It simply filled the scanning frequencies with random noise. It would run on it's own batteries for a couple days until it ran down. Small equipment simply didn't have the power to over come it. Although newer tricorders had the ability to penetrate older jammers, The Marine jammer from the Discovery was state of the art as of two years ago and should defeat the Civilian scanners.

I got the body armor and the helmet on, and that took a little while. The I hefted the rest of the pack and shouldered it.

Fortunately Corporal Malaca found me quickly. She never said which way I was heading when she found me, but I suspect that I had been heading in the complete opposite direction. Once I could see more of the Valley rim though I oriented myself quickly.

I let Corporal Malaca lead the way to the rendezvous point. She was in much better shape than I and knew where Sergeant Major Kendricks wanted to meet up.

Soon enough, I was promising again to pay more attention to my personal fitness. Lugging 70 pounds of combat gear across scrub on an 80 degree Fahrenheit day is just no fun when you're used to data work in a controlled environment

-*-

The rendezvous point was in a depression near the Ziggurat. We could see it in the distance shining like a modern Mirrored building.

Kendricks said "We make four sentries. Colonists armed with their civilian phasers. Those civilian phasers are designed around putting a target down in one shot during a crisis, so they're powerful, but not as accurate as ours. I'd expect their weapons to be set on heavy stun. If you're hit you can expect to be disabled painfully for at least the next several hours and perhaps not up to full effectiveness for two days. If they have their weapons set higher it will hurt worse."

Kendricks was speaking for my benefit. His people knew what to expect from a colonial phaser.

"The last scan showed five people. I expect that the fifth person is in the ziggurat where we can't see her. That will be Elizabeth Sheffield, the Colony leader." I said.

"The four sentries are spread out around the objective. With a few hours effort we should be able to get into a position to snipe them and eliminate them from the equation. Then we can assault the installation, and take the last defender." Kendricks said.

"No." I said.

"Excuse me, Sir?" Kendrick said carefully.

"We'll snipe the sentries like you said. But if the last defender in the place is Elizabeth then she won't have her phaser set on stun." I explained. "Once the Sentries are taken care of I can go in and try to reason with her."

Kendricks got a very unhappy look on his face. "Captain Hailey. If you do that you will be out of communications in the presence of a hostile enemy individual. I would be remiss if I let you take that risk, as well as derelict in my duties as a Starfleet Marine."

"Sergeant Major Kendricks, I note and appreciate your concerns. I find these actions necessary to complete the mission to my satisfaction. I'll put the orders for you in writing if you like."

He simply looked unhappy.

"Look, nobody has even shot at anyone yet." I said. "If we can bring this thing home without having to dig Elizabeth out of there by her roots, then that's a big win in my book."

"All due respect, if you get yourself killed trying to be too reasonable then that's a big lose for me, Sir." Kendricks said.

I began to understand how General Kalak felt. "I believe I have made myself clear."

Kendricks nodded. "Aye, Sir."

"Good Now we'll snipe the sentries and then I'll go in. If I am in there for more than ten minutes, Then it's your turn. Come in hard."

The Marines dubiously said "Aye, Sir.

Sergeant Kendricks held my eye for half a second too long. He didn't like my plan at all.

-*-

One of the sentries was Theodore. They were all younger men from the colony and they were indeed very seriously armed and very seriously looking for us with binoculars.

The Ziggurat was almost blinding in the afternoon sunlight. The surface of the thing was almost perfectly flat and smooth. The main way we could see it is that it was covered with some dust. The edges were very clearly delineated.

The area out to about 30 meters away from the ziggurat had been scoured down to the dense, basaltic rock Some sandstone lay scattered around. The valley we were in had been a Lake once, and since it was a sinkhole it was prone to flooding. This left a nice layer of sediment on the basaltic plug which would have disguised it from casual observation. There was a lip just over a meter's drop down into the scoured area.

We crept up behind a small rise about 150 yards away from the ziggurat. I hunkered down and hid, resting. There was some very quiet small talk. The Marine Squad was 12 individuals including the Sergeant Major. They divided into quads of four each. I stayed with Kendricks and his three companions while the other two quads circled around to get a good shot.

The sun moved very slightly across the sky. I settled into the relax.

"Sir, Captain?" One of Kendricks Marines said. "It's time. Wake up, please."

I blinked. I had actually been asleep! It took a little bit of effort to get my head together. I rolled over and crept up to Kendricks. "How are we doing?"

He was leaning into the log with his weapon trained on the ziggurat. Two of his companions were also similarly set and ready to shoot.

The third, the one who woke me was the back watcher. He kept his head on a swivel and watched for people sneaking up behind. And he woke up sleepy starship Captains.

"When ever you're ready, Captain." Kendricks said.

I hesitated a beat and said "Fire phasers."

Kendricks repeated the order as his two companions fired. The Marine weapons sounded just like the standard phaser rifle. A sort of buzzy snap as the beam shoves the air out of the way, and a whistle from the collimator that we just couldn't get rid of, although on the Marine weapons it was baffled.

The two sentries aimed at fell right over. Several more beams lanced out.

Theodore was one of the first two hit. He just slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. It was very ugly to watch.

One Sentry was missed and screamed bloody murder. He turned and made three big steps towards the doorway to the ziggurat before Kendricks stunned him and he went down.

Then we got up. Rather about half of us did. Kendricks and one of his companions did. The other two stayed covered and waited for someone else to move.

We walked up to the ziggurat negotiating the lip with a complete lack of grace on my part. When we weren't shot for ten minutes or so the rest of the Marines followed us.

Elizabeth wouldn't expose herself by trying to return fire. She lay in ambush for the first person through the door. If it were me she might not shoot immediately.

I took off most of my gear and left it on the cleared ground outside the ziggurat. If I needed it I could get it later.

Suddenly a beam came out of the trees and knocked one the Marines to the ground.

The snap of phaser beams passing near by really gets my attention focused. I felt the electric charge up and down my nerves, a truly unpleasant feeling.

We scrambled for cover. The lip was very nice for that.

"Corporal Malaca!" Kendricks called over his head set. "Corporal!"

I peeked over the lip and saw a lot of people in the bushes over towards where Malaca's quad went. I raised my weapon and blazed away. Did I stun anyone? I have no idea. I was just trying to break up their aim.

Another Marine reported on the downed one. "Stunned! Heavy stun!

I breathed a sigh of relief. No one was going to have to die today.

The Marines got into position and started laying down withering fire. I joined in myself with much less effect but plenty of enthusiasm.

Kendricks scooted over to me. "There seem to be quite a lot of colonists out there, Sir."

"Uh huh." I said.

"If you have something in mind you better do it now, Sir." Kendricks said.

"I'm on it." I said. "Cover me while I get into the ziggurat."

"Aye Sir." Kendricks said to me. Then he spoke sharply and I am sure they heard him in the colony site itself 100 miles away. Oddly, he didn't seem to be yelling. Just projecting. "Marines! Covering fire! FIRE!"

The Marines filled the air with beams and I scuttled into the doorway of the ziggurat

The doorway opened into a corridor that went sharply to my left. The material inside the hallway was that same silvery ultra-dense armor.

With the interior of the hallway armored, there was simply no way to get a beam into the thing without overcoming the armor.

I put my hand on the wall as I passed. It seemed sticky. I pulled my hand away. It was clean. A little pink. The gravity got intense just a little shy of one cell's breadth away from the ultra-dense material. The layer of dirt and dead skin cells along my palm were now being squished flat by the intense but very localized gravity. I was a little dizzy crossing into the ziggurat. It had enough gravity to affect my equilibrium slightly. I expect that effect to even out as I got closer to the center of the thing.

I rounded the corner.

-*-

"You're early." Elizabeth held the phaser on me steadily. Her eyes were hard and she didn't waiver.

With a single button push I activated the overload on my weapon and threw it on the floor.

It started to whine.

Elizabeth sighed and rolled her eyes. "Okay. Now turn it off."

"No." I said. It was the scariest thing I had done since coming face to face with an angry Klingon General. Nevertheless, oddly there was a clarity to it. I knew what I was doing and I was ready to die about it.

The idea of finding something worth dying for was interesting. I was wishing it was a more theoretical exercise.

We were standing in the central chamber of the Iconian ziggurat. There was a central column with a control panel hung off of it. The panel was a hexagon wrapped around the central column, The column glowed a dull red. I assumed that the column was the super-conducting heat rod that brought heat up from the core of the planet and turned it into useable energy somehow.

Behind Elizabeth there was a Stone archway and a door that led to someplace else. I know it was someplace else because I could see snow out that doorway.

Elizabeth said "I'll just stun you and turn it off myself."

"If you can. It's signature locked to me and has a three minute delay." I said. "Our primitive Marines like it when their weapons explode in your face."

"You're not carrying a resentment about that are you?" Elizabeth was exasperated. "Jay, just because my culture has more advanced technology, that doesn't mean I look down on you. I asked you to stay with us. I think you could add a lot to our colony."

"I'm sorry Elizabeth, I can't let you keep this thing." I waved at the Iconian Gateway. In the background places I couldn't identify flashed past the doorway.

"You don't have that choice." Elizabeth said. "We have the Gateway. Is that such a bad thing? We only want to help you survive. I want to help you survive."

"Is this about helping the Federation or getting revenge on the Borg? Is it about our survival or your safety?" I asked.

"If I was concerned with my safety would I be here? Jay, you and your starship nearly got us killed eight separate times in the last two years. If it was my own safety I was concerned for I sure wouldn't be out here in unknown space. This is about building something. This is about creating something. I'm sure you understand that."

"So why do you need the Iconian Gateway?" I asked.

"Because that's what we're building, Jay. The New El Aurian Empire. It's necessary and it's good thing." Elizabeth said.

The whine of the phaser was growing irritating.

"It's about control Elizabeth. It's about clawing your way into a position of telling other people what to do." I said.

"Do you think I like this!?" Elizabeth shouted "You're the Captain of the Discovery. You know what it's like to have total responsibility for people's lives and their well being! Now imagine what it's like to have the well being of civilization itself on your shoulders!"

"Why not let civilization take care of itself?" I asked.

"Because it can't." Elizabeth explained. "You almost lost the Earth to the Borg. You came within three minutes of being assimilated lock, stock and barrel."

"But we weren't." I said.

"That was just dumb luck! Are you going to ride your luck and nothing else with every innocent life in the Federation on line? How many more times until some starship captain somewhere has a bad day and you lose the whole shooting match? How many innocent lives will that cost?"

"And how many innocent lives will you have to sacrifice for the El-Aurian Empire?" I asked.

"I haven't sacrificed any."

"Mary Anne Foote."

Elizabeth grew grim. "That was an accident. And Irwin being an ass."

"He was already to break all sorts of eggs and make all sorts of omelets." I said. "At what point will that sort of exchange start to look worthwhile to you? Elizabeth, we're standing here arguing while a Phaser rifle overloads."

"That's you. That's your choice, not mine." Elizabeth snarled. "I want to build something here."

"Then build it. Build a world that you can be proud of and a world that doesn't have to sneak around behind anyone's back. This," I waved at the Iconian Gateway "This is basically underhanded and you know it."

"The Gateway's just a tool. You're leaping to a lot of conclusions."

"Oh. And when you walked back out on Earth, you'd immediately contact the port of entry to let them know you'd arrived? You'd give Admiral Picard a nice little comm-call to let him know you were in town? Or would you walk back into Wilson Energies and start issuing orders?"

"You're being naïve." Elizabeth said.

"No. Because lying is necessary to the great purpose. Where's the line? How far is too far? Lying is okay then why not discrediting someone? If discrediting someone is okay, why not take some of their stuff? If theft is okay, then why not beat up that inconvenient witness? Can you tune this thing like a transporter? A few guys dressed in black appearing in your house in the middle of the night will really get your attention or so I'm told. From there, how far is to trying to wipe someone's short-term memory? There's cases of this in Prime Directive related situations. Pretty soon you're Colonel Flagg, running loose like a madman and telling yourself it's all for the greater good."

"Don't compare me to that lunatic!" Elizabeth shouted. "We've done this for years with no one the wiser and no one getting unnecessarily hurt. Don't stand there like you're some sort of saint. How many people have you killed?"

I stopped for a moment. She was right. I had some blood on my hands at that point. The Anti-matter pirates. Some Kliges'chee. Just because the Kliges'chee are slimy horrors that doesn't make killing them any less murder. Even some Cardassians during the war.

"Was it worth it? Did the end justify those means?" Elizabeth challenged. "Did you lie to the Cardassians during your war with them?"

"Are you declaring war against the Federation?" I asked.

"No!" Elizabeth said "I am already in a declared war against the BORG! And what's standing behind the Borg? We don't live in a cuddly, happy-go-lucky universe, Jay. We live in a Universe where might may not make right but it does make survival a little easier."

"I was on a Borg cube ship two and a half years ago, Elizabeth. We have no guarantee there even are any more Borg." I said. I recalled how I felt about the Borg at the time. I'd have probably helped Elizabeth set up anti-Borg defenses.

"You have no guarantee that there aren't any more Borg." Elizabeth yelled. "What's worse? Having to maintain an Anti-Borg cannon in a museum or getting assimilated with a dumb look on your face because you didn't know that there were still Borg around? Or discovering the hard way what the Borg are afraid of out there in the dark?"

"So why not build some anti-Borg cannon and leave them where the Federation could find them if we needed them?" I asked. "Why does it have to involve Elizabeth in charge of everything?"

"Because if you had an Anti-Borg cannon with no other controls it would quickly become an Anti-Romulan or an Anti-Klingon cannon, too. Your culture isn't mature enough on it's own to handle having that sort of heavy weapons technology. If you had El-Aurian warp drives without any other alterations to the Federation then there's a very good chance we'd see a Federation Civil war before 150 years had gone by. You need the technology and you need us to keep you from shooting your own feet off with it until you can handle it."

"When we're ready for that technology we'll develop it, Elizabeth. It's a self balancing problem, once you know what you're doing."

"Your people only learned that within my life time and almost murdered the planet Earth figuring it out, Jay."

The whine of the Phaser was becoming quite teeth grating. Through the gateway I could see the Discovery's bridge.

"We don't have long to make a decision, now." I said.

Elizabeth went and scooped up the phaser rifle, never taking her hand phaser off me. She shook her head at the weapon. At its purpose or at it's lack of sophistication? "I'm pretty much dead if it goes off in my hands aren't I?"

"Yes."

"You'd kill me?" Elizabeth clutched the rifle to her chest "Two can play this game. Now, I'm the hostage. Disarm the rifle or you'll be killing me."

I gritted my teeth "Elizabeth is this thing worth dying for?"

"I've seen people die for less."

My eyes got scratchy. I had to blink a lot in order to see. I stepped up next to Elizabeth. "Okay. Let's do it then."

"Disarm the goddamned rifle!"

"No." I snuffled.

Elizabeth looked deeply into my eyes. "Just disarm the rifle and everything will be okay. I promise. We'll work something out. There's no reason to go any further. You've made your point."

I wanted to. I wanted to turn off the Phaser rifle and then turn off my brain and let Elizabeth take care of everything. After all that's what she wanted to do. It seemed like it would be very comfortable and reassuring.

However, I realized that once that Phaser rifle was disarmed I was without any leverage what so ever. "No. Hand me your phaser and surrender this artifact."

The rifle's scream had become piercing and urgent. I wondered if we even had time to escape if Elizabeth decided to fold.

Elizabeth's face grew pink. Muscles worked under skin and stretched in ways that looked really unpleasant. "Who takes care of Woody if I'm gone?"

She was hitting below the belt. I especially liked Woody. "Make your decision and follow it!" I howled.

Beat, beat, scream.

"You son of a bitch." Elizabeth grated. "You tin plated son of a bitch."

She turned the hand phaser around and handed it to me. "I surrender."

I took the phaser with a shaking hand. I hadn't really believed she would.

I checked the Phaser. Heavy stun. It would have sufficed for a stubborn elephant. I quickly kicked down the level two steps and shot Elizabeth. I missed at first and had to walk the beam onto her. She was screaming something when she went down but there was blood rushing in my ears and I couldn't hear her.

I disarmed the rifle with 15 seconds left to go.

I threw the dead weapon on the floor and took a deep breath.

Sergeant Kendricks came around the corner of the hallway. I blinked. He been waiting there the entire time. His Marine Corps buzz cut looked bushier and I could swear that there was more gray in it than before. His eyes were a little wide. He was pale and sweating a little bit. As well as he might.

"Sir." Kendricks said. His tone brooked no discussion or disagreement. "There will be no more scenes like that one."

What else was there to say? "Yes, Sergeant."

-*-

I carried Elizabeth out in a fireman's carry. I scuttled towards the lips blazing away with her hand phaser in the direction of the tree line until we got under cover. I didn't need to hurry. None of the colonists risked the shot.

Then with a large double whump the phaser rifle did go off in the Iconian Gateway control room. There was a reflected flash from inside the ziggurat.

A Voice came out of the tree line "Ahoy Marines!"

"Go ahead!" I called.

"What the hell did you loony toons just do?" I recognized Latimer the old timer El-Aurian.

"I just detonated my phaser rifle on overload in the gateway control room!" I yelled. "I stunned Elizabeth and she's right here. But she surrendered the ziggurat to me!"

Latimer was silent for a moment. "Truce for parley!" He called.

I looked at Kendricks. He nodded shortly. I noticed a two more marines down for a total of three. That left me five. Not enough. "Agreed!" I yelled.

Latimer came out of his cover with spry step. He was almost jogging.

"Have ya got a doctor over there?" he asked.

Again I looked at Kendricks He said "Most of us can do field medicine."

"What's your problem?" I said.

"We surprised yer Marines in those trees." Latimer explained. "They musta been surprised, too. I got a boy down choking on his own throat."

Kendricks stood up. "I can handle that well enough to stabilize him."

"Good enough."

"What's in it for me, old timer?"

"All yer people are right there, stunned silly. Ya want `em back?" Latimer asked.

"Thanks." Kendricks got up. "I'll go see to your kid."

Latimer said "Go ahead. We may have a worse problem goin' on in there."

I sat back and took a deep breath. "Such as?"

"If you damaged the gate way the wrong way, it might just open a gate to deep space and leave it open until we're right all outta air."

"Really?" I asked.

"I have no idea whatever. On the other hand, it just might be wantin' to self-destruct. Now you tell me, with that armor, what sort of self-destruct charge might we be lookin' at?"

I stood up laboriously. "Give me your phaser."

"What?" Latimer said disbelieving. "I ain't surrendered yet, boy."

"If you want to do a damage assessment on my ziggurat you're going to give me your phaser, am I clear!?" I snapped.

Latimer thought about it a bit. The he handed me his phaser. "Let's go."

-*-

Inside the ziggurat there was a burned ozone smell to the air. As we rounded the corner I saw that the gateway now opened into a stone wall identical to the one outside the gate way.. The control panels were present but severely damaged. There was a thin layer of soot. Residual fires still burned on the ruins of the control panel.

"It looks safe to me, now." I said.

Latimer went to square hole in the wall and pulled off the charred remains of an access port. He wiped the smoke off the panel and we saw an anemic display with three sad little blue triangles.

"What's that look like to you?" Latimer asked.

"Well, it's not flashing, or beeping. There's no sirens. I'd guess it's in safe shut down mode. I wouldn't give you long odds on that, though."

"Sorta looks like that to me, too. Let's clear out before it decides to do something really stupid." He looked at me. "I guess you win Captain. We're stuck here after all."

"Not yet." I said "but you will be."

As we left the ziggurat Latimer let loose with one of those piercing finger whistles. A couple of El-Aurians stuck their heads up from where they'd taken cover. Latimer waved his hands at them Palms out hands crossing in a big horizontal motion. Then he drew his finger across his neck. "We're done today!" He yelled. "C'mon out."

About a dozen El-Aurians got up from different places of cover. Some of them quite unpleasantly surprising. If we'd fought for ten more minutes they'd have had us in a beautiful cross fire.

Sergeant Major Kendricks managed to do an emergency tracheotomy on the young man Malaca hit, saving him from choking to death by a very narrow margin.

-*-

The party led by Latimer that ambushed us was a re-supply and relief mission for Elizabeth and her team out at the ziggurat. They came with plenty of horses, although not enough for all of us.

We camped out about 200 yards away from the ziggurat until our stunned and wounded could recover somewhat.

That night when Elizabeth felt like talking. We spoke briefly.

"I'm sorry.." I began.

"You have no idea what so ever." She snarled. "You have no idea what you just cost me, my children, you, your people and the Federation. You have no clue."

"I did what I thought was right, Elizabeth." I said firmly.

She softened, oddly. "That's part of what makes it horrible. You were very brave. Courageous. All noble with your chin stuck out and tears running down your face. And it was completely, utterly misplaced. You just bravely and courageously ruined the work of more than your whole life time and shot yourself in the ass."

I had to take a couple of deep breaths to keep from shouting. There was a leaden silence for few moments. "By the way. Do you think you could give me to codes to fix my starship?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Do you think you could do it without me?"

"Actually yes. You were using the gateway to spy on the Discovery weren't you?"

"Yes." Elizabeth got a funny look on her face. "I was worried about you during your climb to the bridge. It looked like you were having a heart attack a couple of times."

"So how is it you didn't see us coming?" I asked.

"We all have to sleep sometimes. Your schedule has been very screwy since you lost the clocks on the Discovery." Elizabeth even sounded a little embarrassed.

"Well, while we were talking in the ziggurat I saw over your shoulder Snoopy working on the main engineering computer. Apparently they have it partially workable, using Klingon programming."

Elizabeth shook her head wryly. "That's well ahead of Dena's prediction. How convenient that she's not here to be embarrassed by that. If they get the computer working with the Klingon programming, then that's the shooting match. They'll be able to cascade the programming into the rest of the Discovery and you should be back up in a few days."

"I'd like to see the programming anyway." I said.

"Sure. After all there's no point in keeping it from you any more, is there?"

"I'm going to blow it up." I said.

Elizabeth got a very sour expression. "Breaking it thoroughly isn't enough for you?"

"No. I have to be sure that when I leave here, there are no loose ends."

Elizabeth got mad. "You just do what you have to do." She stood up to move away. "We'll give you the code to the sabotage program and a call back up to your ship when we get back to the colony site."

"Does that mean my invitation is revoked?" I said.

Elizabeth's shoulders clenched. "You IDIOT!" she yelled as she stomped away.

-*-

"Five, Four. Last scan shows the area clear of people." Lucas McCoy said. "Three, two, one."

"Detonate." I said.

We used a fairly large charge of anti matter on the ziggurat. A full microgram, 26 kilotons of explosive power. The size of the first atomic bomb.

There was a bright flash from the valley. On the repeater screens we could see a tongue of flame shoot for a half mile out the door of the ziggurat. It was plasma created by the explosion. It vaporized everything in its path, incinerating plants and animals unfortunate enough to be caught in the path. This started a massive forest fire in the sink hole valley which raged for another couple of days.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the ziggurat collapsed in on itself. As it made the last fold we could see molten rock squeezed from the doorway like paste from a tube.

In slow motion scans we could see the rock structure of the ziggurat completely fail in the blast, only to be held together by the ultra-dense cladding.

The rock of the ziggurat itself was unique. It was more of the very dense basalt but it was crystalline in nature and could support dozens more times the weight of normal rock that thick. The walls of the ziggurat were a full meter thick in all dimensions.

Because of the nature of the hallway it actually survived the bombing, only sagging a little bit. However, the Ziggurat folded down on self and became a sandwich of dense engineered rock and ultra-dense molecule thick armor.

It was still glowing in the scans of the infrared sensors a month later when it came time to leave.

-*-

The wind was dry and warm sweeping in from the west. The sun was orange and very warm, lending a peculiar light to the colony and it's valley.

"Arthur, are you sure you want to do this?" I asked him.

"Yes." He said. "There's truth here, calling to me."

Arthur Hendricks, Snoopy as he was known was my first hand picked crewman from the Starship Harrier. We'd served together for years. I relied on him as my most loyal crewman.

"You know this is going to be irrevocable. There may not be another starship along in your life time." I said.

"I know. It's alright. I'll be fine." He said.

I took a deep breath and stilled the quiver I felt in my diaphragm. "Okay then, Mr. Hendrickson. You're cashed out of Starfleet. We'll calculate your energy allowance and you can run the replicators until it's gone."

He smiled "Thank you."

"No," I said. "Thank you. You've been invaluable to me, the Harrier and the Discovery. The Federation owes you its thanks."

"She's mad at you, you know. Real mad." Snoopy said.

"I don't blame her." I said.

"But it wouldn't last if you stayed." Snoopy said. "Deep down, she likes you better than she even lets on to herself."

"I made a promise to get the crew of the Discovery home." I sad.

"That's your excuse. Do you know what the truth is?"

"Tell me."

"Deep in your heart you know she's not the one for you."

I blinked a little bit. "Romantic clap trap."

"Maybe it is, but that's what your heart's saying. Listen to it."

"Listen to my heart? Are you sure that you weren't an El-Aurian all along?" I joked.

Arthur grinned at me with a twinkle. "Maybe. And maybe being an El-Aurian is just a frame of mind."

I laughed at the time. Since then I have checked Arthur "Snoopy" Hendrickson's medical records and sensor scans of him. They come out inconclusive.

I had to say good bye to more crew people from the Discovery, too. Gerald Bruce, the chief computer officer, Martin Pilat one of the hold overs from the Harrier crew. Ensign Spivy from the science department. About fifteen people in all. None of the El-Aurians decided to come back with us.

-*-

On the bridge of the Discovery all was ship shape and we were ready to roll. The damage done by the El-Aurian programming was treated but not erased. The meta-programs were gone, but so were hundreds and thousands of personal modifications, preferences and personal programs. The Discovery's computer had had its personality erased and was starting over. Still for all that she was in as good a shape as one could expect. So were we.

"Course Captain?" McCoy asked me.

"Set course for the Kurr Association. It's a shorter haul there. We can return Commander Rogan and his crew, maybe pick up some spare parts and find a friendly port." I said.

"The Kurr Association, Aye." McCoy said.

"The Kurr Association is also further away from the Federation than we are right now." Mendez said.

I grinned "I know."

-*-

Latimer came in to see Elizabeth. She'd been looking a little blue. Her Captain gone back to the stars. Latimer knew he wouldn't be back. There just wasn't time in the human life span. Deep down Elizabeth knew it too.

"I guess sometimes it's better to be lucky than to be good." Latimer said.

"You think it was luck?" Elizabeth said. "I don't."

"If they'd stayed in orbit a few more days they might have found the damned thing." Latimer said. "You know those folks on the Discovery. Hard to stay ahead of them for long."

Elizabeth nodded. "We got lucky. Who ever designed the pair of teleporters knew what he was doing. The ziggurat worked just the way it was designed."

"It was pretty flashy." Latimer said. "You're convinced that it was a decoy."

"How could it be anything else. Why build something like that monster when you can build them to be hidden so well? No the ziggurat was made to be destroyed in a flashy and difficult way, while the second teleporter escaped notice utterly." Elizabeth said looking at the rock outcropping just outside of the settlement. "And it did."

-end-

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

This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Jay P. Hailey

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