Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode 08: The Et-Tu

(Stardate 45223)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

The Romulan ship drifted in front of us, silently. I was sweating and trying not to show it.

"Any changes?" I asked

"No, Captain." Harksain Varupuchu said. I could tell he thought I was being impatient.

"How about inside the ship?" I asked.

Stephanie Anderson, my Chief of Security was monitoring tricorders that we had turned on and beamed into the derelict ship.

"Nothing, Captain. There are no life forms above fungus and algae level."

What an old Romulan Warbird was doing out here at all was a mystery to begin with. She was empty her crew was gone. There were no bodies and no clues.

Spaat, our Vulcan Helmsman had translated her name, written on the hull. It was a complicated concept. She was named for the emotion you feel when you find that you have been betrayed and all your plans undone, by your best friend, who has been compelled by his honor. In Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, Caesar has this emotion when he turns to find even Brutus has stabbed him. So we called the Warbird Et-Tu.

The temperature and micro-meteorite pitting of her hull showed that the Et-Tu had been abandoned for about fifty years.

I had a decision to make. The reason that the Warbird had been here, and why she had been abandoned might be important. They might be vital to our survival. We weren't finding these reasons by remote control.

"I have a result." Flagg said. I had called him to the Bridge to share whatever knowledge he had about Romulan operations with us.

He was searching through the Harrier's archive. The Harrier, like all Starfleet starships carried as complete archive of all records and knowledge of the Federation. This knowledge was often a useful tool. If nothing else, when you became too bored you could read classic literature or history from the dozens of worlds in the Federation. There was more than a person could read in a lifetime there.

I found it weird and amusing that the Harrier carried data that no one aboard was classified to see. Just in case an Admiral or Ambassador was required by an emergency to use the Harrier as his flagship, Starfleet wanted everything he needed to know available.

Flagg was digging through Intelligence files, trying to find if our intelligence operations had acquired data on the Et-Tu.

"The Et-Tu, a Theta class Warbird, listed as missing in 2307, on a routine science mission." Flagg reported.

I wanted to know what had happened to the Romulans. It might just save our lives. Who would I send? Who might get killed trying to find out?

I didn't like that train of thought. Many Captains had picked up the habit of leading away teams. Now I thought I understood why. If I sent anyone over there I should go, too. It was only fair. We should face it together. After all, wasn't it my responsibility? I knew I was going to hate sitting on the bridge and not knowing.

"Commander." I said to Li'ira "Please take an away team to the Romulan ship. Take Ensigns Spaat and Bruce. They will try to gain access to the Et-Tu's computer. Take Colonel Flagg and try to find out what happened to the crew."

Li'ira listened carefully, until I got to the part about Flagg. She said "Aye, Sir," dubiously, looking at Flagg,

I turned to Flagg. "Commander Li'ira will be in command of the away team, Colonel. Will you have a problem with that?"

Flagg responded with a faint, inscrutable smile "Not at all, Sir."

-*-

The air on board the Et-Tu was hot and tasted stale. As the away team materialized, and noticed this, Ensign Bruce made a whooshing noise and said "Those Romulan sure liked it hot, didn't they?"

"The temperature approximates the surface temperature of the Romulan Homeworld. Approximately ninety-three point five Fahrenheit degrees." Spaat pointed out.

The Harrier's crewmen looked around. They were in a corridor, long and straight. It was dark, only a few light sources dimly shining.

Flagg consulted his tricorder. "The Bridge should be forward. This way." and started in that direction. The away team walked up the corridor towards the leading edge of the ship.

Li'ira suppressed a momentary irritation with Flagg. One of his talents as a spy was a certain lack of content to his body language. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He seemed to randomly and arbitrarily act. Li'ira thought that if she was patient, lenient and observant, she might be able to get the man sent to brig for mutiny. The thought brought a small smile to her lips.

Soon the team reached a set of armored doors leading to the bridge. Flagg tried a button. The doors didn't move. "They're locked." He said.

Li'ira looked to Spaat, who read the control panel and confirmed. "He is correct. The access to the bridge has been locked." He looked at Flagg "I was not aware that you read Romulan, Sir."

"Correct, Ensign." Flagg said.

Li'ira resisted the urge to strangle Flagg and said "Ensign Bruce, can you defeat the lock?" Li'ira thought she might be able to. She knew that Flagg almost certainly could. She wanted to test Bruce's talents for breaking and entering.

Bruce said "Yes, Sir." and got to work on the lock. With quick, methodical steps he detached the face plate of the lock and peered intently at the locking mechanism. After a few moments study he pulled a tool out of his tool kit and gently violated a component of the lock.

The door to the bridge slid open, and a small, irritated beep sounded.

Flagg grinned wider "The test circuit? Where did you learn that?"

Bruce turned to the Colonel "In high school, Sir. In Chicago."

After carefully checking the bridge, Li'ira set the two Ensigns to work on the computer.

Flagg activated the communications console. "Et-Tu to Harrier. This is Flagg, do you read?"

"This is Harrier, we read you. Go ahead." I said

"Away team status good. Ensigns Spaat and Bruce are beginning their work with the computer."

"Colonel, do you have the ability to set up a datalink to the Harrier?" Li'ira asked him.

"Yes, Commander." Flagg's voice was smooth and professional.

"Please do that. Do you have the ability to link our comm-badges through the Et-Tu's internal communications system?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Then let's do that, too."

On the Bridge of the Harrier I could see the datalink come to life on Tillean's panel. My own access was fairly high, and so I had continued searching for old Romulan access codes. I had found a couple of administrative codes that seemed like they might work. I sent them to Spaat and Bruce along the datalink.

Spaat, at the Warbird's science station entered the codes, and the Federation starship Harrier became a Romulan space station as far as the Et-Tu was concerned. Using a suggestion from Ensign Bruce, Spaat declared the crew of the Harrier administrative personnel. The irritating beep stopped, as the Et-Tu realized that the strangers on her bridge were actually maintenance crews from the space station.

Satisfied that work on the computers was going well, Li'ira turned to Flagg and said "Shall we?" With a gesture to the door way.

Flagg nodded jauntily and they left the bridge to explore the rest of the ship.

-*-

Spaat and Bruce immediately ran into problems. The sensors on the Et-Tu had been set to automatically scan at high resolution at close range. The computer had been recording these scans for nearly fifty years, but when Spaat and Bruce tried to download the data, an access code they didn't know of deleted the whole file.

They discovered that a pair of mechanical keys governed full access to the ship and computers. The keyholes were set into the Captain's chair in the middle of the bridge. A search of the Captain's office turned up personal items and information on who the man was, but no keys of any description.

They scanned the locks in an attempt to understand them. Bruce felt that he might be able to manually pick the locks once he knew more about their internal structure. The locks were sealed inside sensor proofed boxes and the Et-Tu warned them that scanning the command ciphers was a mutiny, and any further attempts could destroy the system. Bruce and Spaat wisely quit scanning at that point.

The Harrier was even notified that Spaat and Bruce had performed suspicious activities. The Et-Tu requested the we notify the Political Officer, immediately.

"But he's over there." Tillean said, meaning Flagg.

Stephanie grinned merrily, but Varupuchu silenced Tillean with a cold look. It was breach of discipline. I said "Open a channel to the Et-Tu to monitor the away team."

Stephanie moved to comply and stopped. "Captain, the channel is already open."

"So we can hear them and they can hear us?" I said looking at Tillean. She had the good graces to look embarrassed as she understood my warning.

Spaat and Bruce reported that they did not hear the subversion warnings on the bridge of the Et-Tu. The Warbird had ratted them out behind their backs

Li'ira and Flagg investigated several crew quarters on the Et-Tu. There were no signs of battle or major hardships. Some of the quarters did show signs of struggle and the signs were quite clear. Someone had been locked into the quarters and then forced their way out.

Li'ira and Flagg discovered a large mess hall. The primitive replicators in it were destroyed by some sort of fungus that had eaten many of the electronic components.

They scanned the fungus and we were able to add the scans to our biofilters on the transporters. The fungus wouldn't come back to the Harrier with them.

The mess hall itself had been disrupted somehow. Again it looked as though someone had been locked in, and had broken out.

There weren't even remains of people who had been disintegrated. There was nothing.

They found the Et-Tu's Main Engineering deck. This was a dreadful surprise. Their warp core had been jettisoned. There was a neat little hole in the deck that led down to the outer hull. The access doors had been replaced and neatly patched. The torn conduits and hoses had been repaired or removed. The Et-Tu had remained operational following the loss of her main engine.

A thorough search of the Engineering Deck turned up tools, control computers and plasma conduits all the normal equipment of a working starship. The engineering computers had been severely damaged by the same fungus which had destroyed the replicators. That wasn't too big a deal. The auxiliary power systems would probably have their own computers, and they were much less complex than a matter/anti-matter reactor.

The Warbird didn't need her main engineering computer, if we were going to return her to operation. However, this meant that we wouldn't be able to learn the details of the engineering of the Et-Tu.

They also found a small cylinder. It was about a foot tall and about eight inches wide. It was some sort of paper or plastic. It held some sort of green powder. It had split and the green powder spilled out onto the deck

Li'ira scanned it. The powder was a complex substance, so she fed her scan back to the Harrier for analysis. It wasn't inherently poisonous, or her tricorder would have warned her immediately.

Flagg approached it, "Is it some sort of drug?" He wondered. "Then why store it in Engineering?"

He touched some and held up his fingers. the green dust clung to the tips of his fingers. He sniffed it gingerly, but could not detect any smell. "What's it made of?" Flagg asked Li'ira.

She checked her tricorder again. "Mostly carbon, by the spectrum."

Flagg brushed off his hand. "We won't learn anything new here. Let's keep going. I want to see the Political Officer's office."

They turned to leave. Flagg stumbled. Li'ira was concerned. "Are you all right?"

He stabilized himself "Yeah I'm just a little dizzy. It's too hot in here."

Li'ira was very concerned. She knew that stumbling and getting just a little dizzy was out of character for Flagg.

He was sweating profusely and breathing heavily. "It's just too hot."

Li'ira checked Flagg with her tricorder. His body temperature was high, and his respiration was high. His heartbeat rate was going higher. The tricorder diagnosed excessive stress.

"You're having some sort of reaction. Calm down." Li'ira said. She slapped her comm-badge. "Harrier, this is Li'ira. I need to know what that green dust is. Flagg's having some sort of reaction to it."

I looked at Tillean. She said "I have a good scan. I'm analyzing."

I began to bark orders. "Contamination alert. Transporter room two, prepare an isolation field and get ready to beam the away team back. Sickbay, alert. Colonel Flagg has been contaminated."

"I heard." Doctor Flynn responded "Don't beam them back here. I'm getting ready to go over there myself."

"But-" I began

Varupuchu turned and quietly said. "Captain. I must concur. You can't risk the whole ship."

I felt helpless, but I knew Varupuchu and Dr. Flynn were right. "Doctor, I need you to confirm that you're safe before we beam you over. Will the sealed space suits keep the dust out?"

"They should, Captain."

Flagg began to hyperventilate "I've got to get out of here!"

Knowing that Flagg had trained extensively in martial arts, Li'ira didn't touch him. She stood back and watched as he seemed to panic.

"The ship! It's closing in! I can't breathe!" He screamed. Flagg leaped to his feet and began to run.

Li'ira didn't see any point to following her ex-mentor in a hot and sweaty chase through the Warbird, so she drew her phaser and double checked that it was on stun setting.

"I've got to get out here!" Flagg shouted as he ran from the Engineering Deck and into the corridor. Li'ira sighted, but just as she pressed the trigger, a wave of dizziness threw her aim off.

Flagg disappeared around the corner as the phaser beam missed him.

"Li'ira to Harrier. I have been affected, too. Flagg is loose in the ship." She unsteadily began to follow him

"Beam two space suits over to Spaat and Bruce, on the Warbird's bridge." I said. It was a forlorn hope, but maybe they hadn't gotten enough of the weird green dust to do them any harm.

"Can we use the Warbird's sensors to track Flagg?" I asked Varupuchu.

"Yes, Captain." He made the proper adjustments and a representation of the Warbird appeared on the main screen. We watched Flagg easily out distance Li'ira. He headed outwards towards the outer hull of the Et-Tu.

We could hear Flagg babbling incoherently as he ran. From the sound of it he was panicking from an acute claustrophobia reaction.

Claustrophobia is not something that Starfleet is too used to dealing with. We screen for it in cadets and recruits. Some one with the tendencies toward claustrophobia is usually guided into another career or has a mandatory ground assignment for his whole tour of duty.

People who are stuck aboard enclosed spaces, like starships, for an extended period might get a temporary claustrophobia, and if they are traumatized during that time it may become permanent. Starfleet had the benefit of nearly 400 years of continuous research into the area from Earth, on humans. Some races had more or less data, but it was all taken into account in the designs of Federation starships.

The Harrier had a few larger spaces like the shuttle bays, the cargo holds and the huge lounge. She was also visually very different from one section to another. There were large windows wherever we could reasonably place them.

Somehow, Flagg seemed to have acquired a major case of claustrophobia.

He ran to an upper deck and out to a docking port. There was an air lock there, a door out of the Et-Tu. Except for a few short wrong turns Flagg was heading straight for it.

Li'ira had taken a wrong turn and was shambling along. Although she was still moving, catching Flagg was not her priority. She had another problem.

On the Bridge of the Harrier we could hear her labored breathing, and moans. She could feel the ship closing in on her, too.

"Spaat! Bruce! See if you can lock out the docking port controls!" I called to the crew men on the Et-Tu. They quickly arranged an over ride on the airlock doors. Flagg couldn't throw himself out of the Et-Tu without defeating the lock on the doors. I didn't think that would be too much of a problem for him. "Transporter room two, get a lock on Flagg and be ready to beam him back on my signal."

"Do you have any idea of when you'll be able to neutralize that green dust?" I said to Tillean.

She grinned "Oh, yes. I'm sending the data to sickbay now, Captain. They should have an antidote in ten minutes."

"Really?" I was shocked. It was better news than we had a right to expect.

"Harrier, I'm in trouble." Li'ira said. She sounded strangled and I could hear the undertone of fear in her voice. She was on the verge of losing control.

"Hang on!" I said "We'll have an antidote in ten minutes!"

"I don't think I'm going to make it that long." Her voice quavered "Unless, do you think I could sedate myself?"

It was a novel approach. Shooting up on away team missions was generally frowned on. "Sickbay, please advise Commander Li'ira."

A nurse in Sickbay answered and talked Li'ira through a dosage of pain killers from her med-kit. Dr. Flynn was busily synthesizing the antidote.

Li'ira could almost feel the Romulan ship crushing her. She focused as hard as she could but her hands still shook as she measured out the dose and applied the hypospray to her arm.

Flagg had reached the airlock, but he was in such a panic by the time he got there, that he was unable to break the lockout on the door. He screamed incoherently and clawed at the doors "LET ME OUT!!"

"Tee hee hee." Li'ira said. "Oops. I think I over did it." She giggled more as the drugs took effect.

Now thoroughly intoxicated, Li'ira decided to continue her search for Flagg. Part of her had the vague idea that he should be stopped, but mostly she was thinking that it would be fun to get him stoned from the med-kit.

"This is fun. I'm going to find Flagg and see if I can loosen him up a little bit. Tee hee!" Li'ira's earlier near hysterical claustrophobia was now reduced to a slight feeling of being constrained. Li'ira solved this by leaving her uniform behind her, one piece at a time. She left a trail in the completely wrong direction as she went in search of Flagg.

We were treated to several minutes worth of Flagg's incoherent screaming panic interspersed with Li'ira humming old spacer drinking songs as she wandered, more or less randomly through the Et-Tu. She hummed them off key.

"Captain, How long did you say that it would be until the antidote was ready?" Spaat said calmly.

I looked at Tillean and she held up three fingers.

"Three minutes." I said

"Excellent. Please hurry as much as you can." Spaat said with perfect calm.

"Hurry Uuuuupp!" Ensign Bruce moaned "Pleeeeeease!"

With a shock I realized that the green dust had affected them, too.

I turned to Stephanie "Get a quad of Security into sealed space suits and have them meet Dr. Flynn in the transporter room."

Stephanie nodded to me and gave her orders into her panel.

"I've got it!" Flynn shouted "I'm dosing myself now. I'll meet security in the transporter room. Have them ready to go!"

Soon we could hear the second away team beaming onto the Et-Tu. Flagg's screams took on a higher pitch as he realized that they were there to stop him from getting out. "No! I've got to get out! You don't understand! They'll get me! Can't let them have me! Aiiee!"

The security officers escorting the Chief Medical Officer stunned Flagg liberally. Then held his limp form down while Flynn administered the antidote.

"Can we screen for that green dust with the transporters?" I asked.

Tillean said "Yes, Captain."

"Do it. When that's in place, beam Flagg back to the Harrier."

"Aye, sir."

"What is that green shit, anyway?"

Tillean was excited by it "It's a clever weapon. It's an artificial piece of DNA. It would effect most humanoid species that I know of. It's designed to be adaptable to a large number of different types of DNA analogs. I'm not certain what effects that it's designed to have, but the people who made it weren't stupid. It has receptors for an artificial enzyme that will break it down. I suppose that they wanted to be able to neutralize it themselves, if necessary."

"And you came up with that analysis in less than ten minutes?"

"I did my bio-genetics thesis on a similar design." She saw the looks on all of our faces "It was hypothetical, of course!"

-*-

Later, everyone had been dosed and recovered from the effect of the green dust. Li'ira had to be detoxified from her overdose of pain killers. When she regained her sobriety, she was livid and bristled about it for quite a while.

Flagg was mellowed out on sedatives of his own. The human body was not designed to run in overload mode for more than ten straight minutes. Dr. Flynn repaired all the damage to his hands and fingers from trying to force his way through the airlock door. She reported that he would need a good night's sleep and then he would be reliable. She mentioned with relish that he would be stiff and easily tired out for another two or three days.

-*-

"The Romulans have a dual command structure in their ships." Flagg was telling me. "The Captain and the Political Officer share command authority, although it's divided along political and operational lines, supposedly. Each officer has a mechanical key which turns a lock on the bridge. The Romulans are paranoid and work extra hard to make these keys difficult to duplicate and the locks hard to pick."

"The Federation has never recovered a political officer's key. We might be able to duplicate one, but they change them faster than we could duplicate one."

"If both locks are tampered with, the ship self destructs. If the Captain's key is tampered with, the command and control computers are erased, although data banks might remain. If the Political Officer's key is tampered with all data is erased from the ship's computer although the ship remains operational."

"Nice guys."

"Yeah, Orwell would've felt right at home."

-*-

A few minutes after that, we found the crew of the Et-Tu. Working on the assumption that they had been affected by the green dust, but hadn't been able to counteract it, I had the Harrier scan for debris within a thousand miles of the Romulan ship. If we found any debris it was to be scanned for organic compounds.

Starship sensors are designed with certain odd blind spots. It's not in the angles they cover, or spectrums that they can see, or how fast the computers integrate the data. It's in what they are programmed to recognize. It's in the way the designers thought. We might have actually hit some of the crew of the Et-Tu while we approached on impulse power. They were dead and floating several thousand meters away from the Et-Tu. The Harrier never noticed, because organic beings don't reflect EM radiation very well. Living organic beings tend to give it off, especially in the infrared spectrum. They show up well against blank, cold space.

The Harrier saw the dead Romulans as small bits of harmless space debris, not very dense and no challenge at all to the navigational deflectors. Automatic systems could easily deal with them, and did so.

Now that we knew what to look for we saw them. 175 dead Romulans. It was grotesque and spooky.

We found the Captain of the Et-Tu. He had the time and presence of mind to put on a space suit before leaping out of the Et-Tu. His name was Zadask. Eventually he told us the whole story.

Once we found him, I sent a shuttle craft to retrieve him. He had been contaminated by the green dust and had eventually panicked inside his suit. He used up all of his air, about a four day supply and then died, and just sat in the suit for fifty years.

Dr. Flynn did the post mortem and she seemed a little green when she was done. Zadask had his command key with him inside the suit.

We found the Political Officer in a similar condition, except, rather than give in to the panic, he had opened his face plate and had died of vacuum exposure. He looked like an ancient mummy. He didn't have his command key with him, and we never found it. He might have disintegrated it, or he might have thrown it away from his body as he left the Et-Tu. We would never know.

-*-

The Captain's command key unlocked the controls of the Et-Tu and the Captain's personal computer and files. The Et-Tu erased all history, language, codes and recognition codes for the Romulan Empire. All operation and navigation records. Everything. The Et-Tu forgot everything about where she was from, and where she had been.

Zadask had left his log and a fairly large data file in his cabin, where the Et-Tu's self induced lobotomy could not erase it.

-*-

"I don't know who you are who have found this. It is my fondest hope that you are Romulans. If not, then I bring you the greetings of the Romulan Empire. I have left this record behind as a warning. There is a danger that threatens nearly anyone. We in the Romulan Empire have been fighting a terrible war since [2279] with the Kliges'chee. They are a race of rapacious cannibals who eat sentients."

Zadask was seated in his office, wearing his space suit. His features were drawn and pale. He looked like he was on the verge of collapse. He was fighting the green dust and it showed.

"In [2307] we were hard pressed by the Kliges'chee and felt that soon we would have to place all effort and concentration into the effort to overcome the Kliges'chee in order to win." "As part of that effort we of the Et-Tu have been sent on a mission to circumnavigate the Kliges'chee. It was our goal to find the limits of Kliges'chee expansion. Perhaps we might find another race to ally with."

"At least, that is what we thought." He looked tired, beaten. "It has been sixteen years and only now are we beginning to understand the full extent of the Kliges'chee. One year ago, we met a Kliges'chee battle cruiser, and we are a thousand light years from Romulus."

Zadask flipped a switch and we saw another ship. It looked like a group of stretched out dynamic walnuts. It was attacking the Et-Tu. After a brief engagement the two ships seemed evenly matched. The Et-Tu out gunned her opponent, but he was an excellent tactician, and used every weakness of the Et-Tu against her.

Then the Kliges'chee ship turned and fired a new weapon. it wasn't like anything I had ever seen before. The repeater screens showed the Et-Tu had lost most of her shields, and that her warp core was destabilizing.

The firing opportunity for the new Kliges'chee weapon left the other ship vulnerable and the Et-Tu shot him with a full barrage of disruptors and plasma torpedoes. The Kliges'chee ship didn't last long against that.

The victory was a phyrric one for the Et-Tu. She had to jettison her warp core and make for the nearest planet under impulse power. Their acceleration had to be desperately slow, since they didn't have that advantages of an their main power unit to accelerate with. They had to balance acceleration against what fuel they could scoop from the space in front of them.

The Et-Tu was not a Bussard ramjet as her primary function. She wasn't real great at operating that way.

"I should never have let that idiot Nevedek bring that sample of Kliges'chee space dust aboard. He thought we could use it against our enemies, the Federation or the Klingons. He could not grasp that our survival might depend upon them. The ship is saturated and the crew is even now spacing themselves. If the Kliges'chee were here now, they would beam my suffocating crew into their nightmare ships and eat them. At least they won't get that satisfaction."

"Following this message is a copy of our tactical data concerning the Kliges'chee. I hope that they have not won and devoured us. I hope that you will have a chance of defeating them."

He twitched and sat up straight. "I- I have to go now." His eyes were hollow he knew what was coming and was powerless to prevent it. Zadask hit the switch and his last message was over.

Following it was the tactical data, and copies of his logs. We could now trace the voyage of the Et-Tu.

-*-

As an operational starship, the Et-Tu was a lost cause. We studied her for five days, taking every scrap of data we could find. Flagg eventually informed us that Starfleet knew a lot about these types of ships and that they weren't in general use any more.

I had been worried. Six weeks ago, when the Harrier had been thrown out of Federation space, we had damaged some critical engine components. We were now running on back ups. The Et-Tu had some analogs of the parts we needed. They were very close to Federation equipment, enough to make me wonder. Flagg knew that the Romulans had been as successful in the intelligence arena as the Federation, and they had developed warp drives based on Klingon and Federation had-me-downs. That also counted battle loses.

We stripped the Et-Tu of everything that we might use or recycle. I didn't like it, but we weren't exactly in the best situation. Those parts and elements might just be the margin we needed to get home.

When we were finished, we reburied the Romulan Captain Zadask in space. We left him with a copy of his last message as well as our own logs up until that time. In case anyone ever found him, and was interested.

We destroyed the Et-Tu, so that no one else could take advantage of her corpse.

I ordered the subspace cannon readied and on the evening of the sixth day I sent the Et-Tu's final report home, to Romulan High Command. I didn't know the proper codes and the intelligence was fifty years out of date, but I didn't want to think that these Romulan space men had died for no reason.

Space is so large and points of light, warmth and life are so few and far between, you wind up identifying with anyone who goes out into it. They may have been Romulans and dedicated enemies of the Federation, but in the end, they came out here for the same reason that I did. Their country called, and the unknown needs to be uncovered.

Maybe it had been five decades, but Romulans live for a long time, and maybe the loved ones of these crewmen would able to sleep better knowing for once and all what had happened.

I also sent a copy of the message back to Starfleet Command. I had broken regulations by opening personal unauthorized contact with the Romulan Empire. I didn't want one of Flagg's people to report it. I also was impressed by the danger of the Kliges'chee and I wanted to make sure that Starfleet knew the extent of the threat.

We set course to the galactic south attempt to avoid Kliges'chee territory on our way back home.

-End-

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