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Star Trek: Pioneer Rating: R (For language, sexual references, and Sci-Fi violence) Junior Lieutenant David Cabrillo reported to the bridge and stopped in his tracks just inside the turbolift. The bridge was deserted. The young man had never seen a deserted bridge in a ship while underway. Hesitantly, overcome by a sudden flash of superstition, Cabrillo stepped off the turbo lift and stood at attention as the door slid shut behind them. Compared to the last three hours of excitement during the flare jump, the unnatural quiet of this unfamiliar room turned his spine to ice. “That you, Lieutenant?” Captain Koon’s voice asked from below. The familiar voice went a long way towards settling the boy’s nerves. There wasn’t a shred of fear in it. Koon sounded merely curious. He might have been asking about book titles in a library for all the concern he conveyed. “Yes, sir,” Cabrillo answered. “Come up here and take navigation,” the Captain ordered. The manner in which he said it reminded Cabrillo of his grandfather offering a chair on his porch so he might listen to stories for a lazy afternoon. Cabrillo obeyed and walked around the ops consol. He saw, to his surprise, the Captain sitting alone at the helm. It was a strange and yet fascinating scene to his mind. The stillness of this ordinarily busy room contrasted even more strangely with the Captain sitting at the helm. It occurred to David Cabrillo he had never seen the Captain in any other station other than his command chair. Koon waved a hand at the navigation console absently while he scrutinized the panel in front of him. “Right there, David,” he said. The familiar use of his name made the young man have a sudden flash of anxiety. Was he in trouble? The images of going to the principal’s office for being disobedient made his knees feel suddenly watery and unable to support his weight. Cabrillo sunk into the indicated seat and stared at the panel. “Where are we going?” Koon asked mildly. This seemed a strange question to ask him, Cabrillo mused. “Uh, sir, I’m an astronomer,” he stammered. “I know,” Koon said. “You’re now a ship’s navigator. Now where are we going?” “Uh, sir, I…” Cabrillo began to ask but Koon interrupted him. “I sent the bridge crew down to help with the wounded, Lieutenant,” he explained. He turned to face Cabrillo, “We have quite a few of those, in case you didn’t know,” he added then turned back to his panel. “I sent Lieutenant Kree along with the rest since she’s been exhausted by the Flare jump. While I don’t think where I sent her is in any way soothing, she needs to be up and about for a while to clear her mind.” Koon sounded calm and quiet. He spoke just above a whisper as if not to offend the pristine silence of the room. “I looked through the duty log and discovered a couple of nasty surprises,” he continued. “Lieutenant Van Cliff is in sick bay with serious injuries. Lieutenant Duggig is currently on the operating table. Lieutenant Fix is senseless in triage, and Lieutenant Polk is dead. Including Kree, Okuma, and myself, those are all the qualified navigators on the ship. The list of available helmsmen is even shorter for the moment so your name is on the list of navigators from now on.” “Sir, I don’t think I have the proper skills you have in mind,” Cabrillo said nervously. Koon nodded, “You’re right of course. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t dream of putting you in that chair without a work-intensive year of training, but we’re in luck.” Koon tapped his chest with the tips of his fingers, “I’m a qualified navigator.” “What am I here for then?” Cabrillo asked. “I can fly this ship all by myself, kid, but I have no idea where to go from here,” Koon explained. “I need you to scout out a location for us to hide for the next few weeks.” “Weeks?” Cabrillo repeated dumbfounded. Koon nodded. “Sad isn’t it,” he mused, “We just got her back together and now she’s falling apart on us.” “I was under the impression we were close to completing the repairs,” Cabrillo said. “Nope,” Koon said, “but I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. The rumor mill has told me everything under creation this past two weeks. I can’t imagine what it told you.” “I suppose that’s true, sir, but I’m just an astronomer…” Cabrillo objected. “…And a damn fine one, David,” Koon said before he could continue his protest. “You find things in sensor data I scarcely imagine about stars and planets when I look at the same information.” Cabrillo smiled in spite of himself. Now at age 24, he was the single youngest member of the crew from the beginning of the voyage all the way up to the present, his credibility never quite managed to measure up to others aboard. Not that he was ever doubted when it came to his field, but he lacked any real importance next that of to the more seasoned scientists. Nobody cared that he had graduated fourth in his class at the Academy when he was only seventeen. Nobody cared that he was the son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great grandson of astronomers on both sides of his family. All the other members of the science team rolled their eyes when he explained he had been doing precisely what he was doing now since he was a toddler. Instead, he could only be young to his colleagues, as opposed to a talented, or even brilliant, astronomer. Stargazing was second nature to him, and he felt both proud and awed by his chosen vocation. The slow dance of fusion, gravity, light, magnetism, and dust, when combined, produced an endlessly beautiful and fascinating spectacle. He would have been an astronomer even if he had to stay at home and farm for a living. Living with astronomer parents and mentored by stargazing grandparents (all fourteen of them right up to 110 year old great-great grandmother Daphne Cabrillo) it was no surprise he fell into line. Dinner conversation revolved around figures, intensities, spectroscopy, gravity wells, gravity shifts, relative time, and quantum physics. It didn’t hurt one bit that his parents were passionate and eager teachers. Their son David occasionally wandered with his interests, but he always came back for more stargazing with rapt attention. It pleased and surprised his parents to discover that not only did their son have an interest in “the family business,” but was also an incredibly bright child (a pleasing happenstance to a pair of parents obsessed with bright points of light in the sky to have a bright mind in their offspring.) David rushed impatiently through school and was accepted into the Academy at the tender age of fourteen. Three years later, Ensign David Cabrillo accepted the post aboard Pioneer with the enthusiastic support of his entire family. His sending off party was attended by no fewer than 500 family and friends, and he could have spent days talking up the stars if the ship would have waited for him. Then the mission got underway, and his age landed on him like a dunk in cold water. Pioneer was an unpleasant revelation to Cabrillo. While the military formalities were easy to understand, his fellow crewmen were not. In the first few days, he learned not to talk about his work unless asked. This included everyone including his immediate boss Dr. Spaulding and his immediate superior Lieutenant Locke. Accustomed to sharing what he had learned almost immediately with everyone nearby, he endured ridicule at every turn from his crewmates. He was shocked to discover people turning him away with the comment, “I’m really not interested, Ensign,” or something very near it. Never in his life had he been around so many hostile avenues to express his trade. He came to understand his position on Pioneer was considered obsolete and unnecessary. The ship’s computer automatically charted stars, and the ships sensors were the finest ever produced up to that time. Astronomy was a field relegated to universities and fueled by data the ships of the Fleet sent back to them. Why keep a dedicated astronomer aboard at all when the ship could point out objects of interests along the way? Then again, there was his age. Questions about his maturity arose the moment he beamed aboard. Lieutenant Locke took one look at the fresh faced Ensign on the transporter pad and groaned, “I’m a babysitter now?” That had set the tone for the next seven years. He was later to learn all Ensigns were treated somewhat poorly (a rank considered so junior as to not be allowed to go to the head alone,) but at seventeen, brilliant, and completely cut off from his family for the first time, Cabrillo soon discovered a whole galaxy of unpleasant facts assaulting him. He was repeatedly told he was eccentric and naïve. Then he was led to believe those two vises were not about to be tolerated. Time after time, he found himself the butt of jokes he wasn’t allowed in on, and this daily humiliation eroded his self-confidence in short order. When he tried to show how smart he was, he was dismayed to discover an entire ship of people just as smart, or smarter, who were stoically unimpressed. With no one his own age around and being the only astronomer aboard, loneliness set in as feelings of isolation crashed down on him in uncontrollable waves. By the second year into the voyage, David Cabrillo had become a recluse. Over the next five years, he managed to eek out a niche for himself, and gradually he became one of many familiar yet forgettable faces in the corridor. He did his job (often around the clock since there was little else for him to do,) filed his reports, and worked on his doctorate (which he received from the prestigious Greenwich University in the third year of the voyage.) That might have been the highlight of the entire trip had Koon not called him up here. Naturally having been told all this time he was inexperienced on an almost hourly basis, he’d developed doubts about his abilities. Being told for the first time in literally years he was a “damn fine” astronomer by none other than Koon himself made all the loneliness and nervous silence around the crew lift off his heart like the sun over the morning horizon. Smiling broadly, filled with an urgent desire to please his Captain, he asked, “What are we looking for in a hiding place?” Koon itemized his thoughts in short order and Cabrillo was delighted to have over fifty candidates right off the top of his head. “We’ll need to narrow it down a bit,” Koon chided David gently. “Show me the systems not along our current trajectory.” When the list narrowed only by about five stars the Captain added, “Show me the ones with the potential for M-class planets. Cabrillo narrowed the field down to forty stars, and then added fifteen more when he took a closer look at the data. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. He seemed to be saying that so often every day his throat was hoarse. “I’ll try to narrow the field down some.” Unfortunately, he only found more stars that could have an M-class planet. With an increasing sense of panic, David frantically tried to eliminate stars from the list so that he could tell Koon where they should go. He was close to tears with frustration when the Captain tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Calm down, David,” in that same near whisper he’d been using. “But I can’t find just one!” Cabrillo protested. To his surprise, Koon looked relieved. “Good,” he said with sudden good humor. “Very good, we’ll be hard to find around here.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment then said, “What’s your favorite kind of star?” The question caught Cabrillo off balance. “My…favorite?” he asked dazedly. “Yes,” Koon said still in apparent good sprits, “What’s the kind of star you’d like to study up close?” Cabrillo couldn’t believe his ears. “Isn’t that rather arbitrary?” he asked. “I mean, the fate of the crew depends on the best place to hide doesn’t it?” Koon smiled, “Let’s put it this way: if it doesn’t make sense to me, it won’t make sense to anyone else looking for us.” Cabrillo almost laughed. Koon had a whimsical side he had scarcely imagined. He turned back to the navigation panel and looked over the charts again. Much to his surprise, he discovered the controls were a near duplicate of his own workstation back in the planetarium. The main difference was instead of being set up to swing his point of view around space, he had a more limited point of view in relation to a host of vector commands. He opened his mouth to point this out to Koon when he noticed… “There!” he announced with sudden energy. Without thinking, he brought the system up on the main viewer. A cluster of five stars orbited each other about two light years apart. On the viewer it looked like the points of a pyramid. The system he had in mind was one of the lower corners of the pattern. Koon studied the cluster for a time then looked at the course he would have to plot in order to get there. “It can be done,” he speculated, “any reason why you want to see that system?” He listened to Cabrillo’s explanation for five thoughtful minutes before he nodded his assent. He keyed in the course and Pioneer swung around to a new heading. “Tell me more about this cluster, David,” he said. “I’m usually not impressed with this sort of thing, but you make it sound downright interesting.” Cabrillo almost exploded with excitement. For years, he had been silent about his trade, and he was grateful beyond his ability to express to the Captain for giving him this opportunity. Over the next hour, he barely let Koon get a word in edgewise as he explained all he knew about the cluster. To his surprise, Koon was a fine listener. He asked occasional questions and was clearly interested in what David had to say, but for the most part he let the younger man ramble on uninterrupted. They might have gone on like that for hours to come had Okuma and Kree not stepped onto the bridge. “It’s bad, Captain,” Okuma announced. “Twenty dead and another forty-one down for at least a week. We’ll be lucky to muster a single watch at half capacity to complete the repairs.” Koon looked grim. “I need to talk to Eddie. We can’t keep falling apart like this every six weeks.” He turned back to stare at their destination on the main viewer for a moment then thumped his panel as a sudden flash of insight struck him. “This calls for an overhaul,” he declared. He turned to Kree, “Lieutenant, you have the con. Sam and I will be in main engineering if you need us.” He motioned to the turbolift and beckoned Okuma to join him whit a curt, “Commander,” before they left the bridge. The bridge assumed its unusual silence once the door to the turbolift shut. Kree tapped a few keys on the helm control panel before she sat down with an exhausted plop. For a long time she didn’t move. She stared at the main viewer without seeing it for a long time before she stretched out in the chair, slumped down in it, and let her head loll over the back. “You could move to the Captain’s chair,” Cabrillo suggested brightly. “I don’t think…” “Quiet, Lieutenant,” Kree said without straightening up. “I need to…” she searched for the words, “…clear my mind a while if you don’t mind.” Cabrillo obeyed and turned his attention back to the main viewer while he absently tapped at a few keys to shift the view of the cluster this way and that. After a while, Kree moved to the Captain’s chair and settled into it with obvious relief. “This is comfortable,” she said more to herself than to her company. With a sigh, she stretched out again and stared at the cluster on the screen. “Show me something else, Lieutenant,” she ordered. “Like what?” Cabrillo asked. Kree ran her blue fingers through her white hair absently a few times before answering. “Something beautiful,” she said groggily. Cabrillo tapped a few keys and brought up a stunning view of the Dighton nebula. One of the most fertile star nurseries in the Milky Way, the image was a spellbinding array of delicate colors and cloudy patterns. It was an image he was particularly fond of, and he turned to see her reaction. To his surprise, she wore a sour expression. “Oh come on!” she spat. She waved her hand at the image and asked, “Is that the best you can do?” Cabrillo tapped a few more keys and brought up an image of the Gannet Supernova. “Been there, it’s not that great,” Kree declared. He brought up an image of the Horseshoe nebula. “Seen it a thousand times,” Kree complained. The image switched to the Minos Cluster. “Too stark,” Kree judged. The Polaris system came up next. “Unremarkable,” Kree announced Betelgeuse. “Ugly star in my opinion.” The blue giant of Gm4458. “Striking but unremarkable,” Kree declared. This went on for ten minutes before Cabrillo decided on an obvious candidate she would dismiss just as easily: Andoria. Kree opened her mouth to denounce the image then shut it again. He panned the image across the system and began to zoom in on her home planet. Soon the image ducked under the atmosphere and gently dropped to the surface of one of the oceans. He moved the point of view across the ocean until he stopped at the blue glaciers of the Commerce Straights. Similar to the glaciers found at Tierra Del Feigo at the tip of South America, these were just as striking and ten times the size. A massive wall of white and blue marched down to the water of the Straight while city sized chunks of ice caved off and thundered into the water. He turned around to judge her reaction. She stared at it spellbound. Her antennae seemed to pulsate and breathe while the rest of her head remained absolutely still. After a long, breathless moment, Kree said one word that Cabrillo knew meant he had done well: “Home!” He lifted the view slowly over the glacier and ran it inland to the exotic forests of Andoria. Later he moved on to the vast deserts banding the equator, and he had some fun later on navigating through the streets of one of the larger cities. During all of this, Kree sat spellbound in the Captain’s chair. For a wistful hour, she forgot the trials she had gone through in the past seven years, and reposed in the familiar scenes of a distant, perhaps forever lost, home. After three hours of lazily drifting across Andoria’s surface, Koon returned. He didn’t seem upset that two of his officers were seriously, and obviously, neglecting their duties, but he did bring an end to it. He ordered Kree to her quarters for a mandatory rest of no fewer than ten hours, and settled into the helmsman’s chair again next to Cabrillo. Before she left, Kree thanked Cabrillo with a curt, “Thank you, Lieutenant,” and walked off the bridge. Compared to the last few years, the young man’s social life had all but exploded, and there was more to come. “Tell me, David,” Koon asked as he settled in, “What does the astronomy department need?” Over the next ten hours, Cabrillo gabbed on and on about his trade until he was hoarse. Koon listened attentively in an apparent effort to stay alert, and chatted the boy up until the young man almost forgot the loneliness of the voyage. At the beginning of the morning watch, David was still running on full throttle when the rest of the bridge crew began to filter in. Compared to the intimacy of the empty bridge, the presence of others made him feel self-conscious and shy all over again. Among the first to enter was Lieutenant Locke. The mere sight of her choked a word right off in his throat. Locke didn’t seem at all surprised to see David here, nor did she appear to care. Huge, dark circles ringed her eyes, but her face was puffy with sleep. Ordinarily a striking woman, Locke looked pale and ill. She recoiled from loud noises and rubbed at her face while she yawned. She sat at her station but clearly didn’t process anything in front of her for the better part of five minutes. Her head bobbed stiffly on her neck and her hands groped around the controls in untidy sweeps. It was a side of her Cabrillo had never seen or suspected, and he caught himself trying not to stare at the spectacle of his superior. He’d come to think of Locke as an Ice Queen barren and precise, but the woman in front of him was human and ordinary. After so long under her thumb, others might have celebrated a minor victory over this figure. Instead, he found a deep well of compassion for her. For the first time he had seen her at her worst and she was no triumph to be found, only a tired, young woman. “Lieutenant,” Koon said; signaling that the brief sojourn at the Captain’s ear was officially over by abandoning his name in favor of his title. “You may return to your duties.” Cabrillo felt a strong sense of loss as he rose from navigation. Gripped with a sudden despair, he was certain this all too brief moment of bliss would be the last for years to come. Without a doubt, the past few hours were the happiest hours of his time aboard Pioneer (and had he been asked just then he might have qualified it as the happiest time of his life.) Now it was over. He was to march back into his reclusive way of life and to be ignored for the remainder of the voyage. It was enough to bring him to tears. “You’ve been here the whole time, Cabrillo?” a voice asked him as he turned to leave. He turned and saw to his surprise, Kree smiling at him. She stood between him and the turbolift and seemed genuinely shocked to see him here. “W-w-well,” he stammered in the full grip of an attack of anxiety, “the Captain and I…” He trailed off. His shy instincts told him to shut up before he made a fool of himself, but he couldn’t seem to find a way to finish his thought. He felt the eyes of others begin to linger uncomfortably on him, branding him as young and foolish with the sight of his elders. Kree saved him by embarrassing him. She gave him a peck on the cheek and moved past him, “Thanks for letting me sleep, last night,” she said lightly. A chorus of hoots and whistles met this comment followed by a few good-natured chuckles. Cabrillo blushed bright red and staggered to the door followed by a few “Atta’ boys” and pats on the back. While he was mortified by all this, he noticed that every face in the room was smiling at him. To his shock those smiles were, for the first time, inviting. They knew he was embarrassed, but they were willing to share the absurdity of his manner with him. He may have been the butt of this joke, but he could laugh with them this time. Before he could make it to the door, Commander Hurst stepped in front of him, and faced him sternly. Those chilly blue eyes regarded the younger man with profound gravity. Hurst then put his hands on Cabrillo’s shoulders solemnly and said in his thickest German accent, “’Vell done, my boy.” “You leave him alone, Willie,” Kree chided. The room exploded with laughter. Cabrillo began to giggle at first then managed to vent a laugh or two. Hurst didn’t mind a bit. His face broke into a wide grin and he patted one of David’s shoulders as he showed him to the door. Before the door slid shut, Hurst confided to David, “What a nice way to start the day.” It turned out to be a nice way to end it too. Commander Gordon slept under a diagnostic table instead of returning to his quarters. He had no time. After two fitful hours of sleep, he slid from under it and returned to work. Not the methodical, measured work of problem solving, but the hard labor of clearing debris and ruined parts off the ship. Jagged fragments were everywhere, and he had a Chief go replicate gloves for everyone before the day fully got underway. That didn’t stop him from turning his hands into savaged paws at the ends of his arms before the gloves arrived. The first day’s watch arrived in a dejected flow of uneager faces. All of them were fully aware that all their hard work from the last six weeks had come close to being ruined by the intruders and the Flare, and facing the whole mess over again took the fight right out of them. Their postures sagged and their eyes regarded the floor with disinterested fascination. Some sported angry wounds and moved with obvious pain. One poor fellow had his right hand bound up in a strange, flattened shell that reduced that appendage to no more than a plate. Another had so many bits of neuro-chips over his head he resembled a crude Borg drone. “Good morning, everyone,” Gordon announced as the last of them filtered in. “I’m sure you’re all aware that the situation is grim.” Eyes rolled, heads nodded, and disgusted grunts rumbled through the assembled engineers. The utter chaos of the deck was plain for all to see, and they were impatient with any comment that would draw attention to it. Attention they knew they, and precious few others, would have to lavish upon this heap of a ship once again. As if once through the fire wasn’t enough! “But things are not as desperate as they were before,” Gordon informed them. “If you all will note behind me, the warp core is operating and we are underway.” Some more eyes rolled, but a few head looked up in surprise for they hadn’t noticed the steady pulse of the core. Some faces looked downright relieved at the sight. Maybe there was hope after all. Gordon decided to inform them all in full of the magnitude of what Koon and he had worked out yesterday. “We can’t keep rebuilding Pioneer every time we get in a scrape,” he announced. “I’m sure everyone will agree with the Captain and I that continuing as we have for the past few weeks: is unsupportable.” “We need just a little time to put her fully back together again,” one of his Chiefs insisted. “Just give us a while longer in the clear, and we’ll get it done.” “Or do the sensible thing and go home,” another voice said bitterly. A few grunts of agreement met this statement, but Gordon was relieved to note the grumblers were a distinct minority. He knew he couldn’t count on things to stay this way, but he was satisfied his people weren’t fatally divided. Gordon decided to ignore the grumblers and announced the full scope of what was to come. “We’re going to rebuild the ship. As soon as the Captain makes orbit around a suitable planet, we’ll set to work building a dry dock then tear down the ship and completely refit her for what’s ahead.” Strangely, there was almost no response to what he said. Eyes narrowed or widened, a few jaws went slack, but for the most part his people stared dully at him. “Why not build a whole new ship?” someone finally asked. Gordon smiled at the invitation, “What would you change?” he asked. The man rolled his eyes and began enumerating his ideas on his fingers. “Delete the mission mast outright and use the structure behind the saucer section for a hangar, reinstall the phaser capacitors closer to the emitters…” “Yeah,” someone agreed behind him, “we must lose a third of the power for each shot in the maze of power relays.” The first man wasn’t finished yet, “We should move all the science stations closer to the main computer. We could save thousands of kilos in networking gear by doing so.” This met up with universal agreement. A diminutive female Lieutenant chimed in next. “We could lengthen the ship out to improve her stability at high warp.” A sudden hush fell over the engineers at the thought of it. “They won’t let us run that wild,” the first man said. “On the contrary,” Gordon interrupted. “We have Captain Koon’s full authority to redesign the ship in any form we wish. Given a little time, we could rebuild Pioneer into a Galaxy-class ship if we deem it necessary.” “That would be a mistake,” the woman said sharply. “Can you tell me why?” Gordon asked. “Those ships are huge,” she pointed out. “We need to decrease our workload. A ship like that would leave us undermanned for simple housekeeping let alone the breakdowns.” “Double or triple our workload by making more stuff that will break?” another man asked himself laconically. “I’ll pass on that.” Gordon was surprised this was going half so well. The mood was sour, but the assembled engineers were trying to solve problems instead of digging in their heels and refusing to contribute. “We’ll be allowed to proceed as we see fit with an eye on survivability, flexibility, and crew comfort.” “Why crew comfort?” The laconic engineer asked. “We can be made to fit around the ship instead of the other way around, and that will solve a few nagging problems.” Gordon was dreading this part. He and Koon agreed that bringing up the overall mission in any setting today was likely to be ugly. The crew had taken a body-blow to their moral, and worse was likely to come at this rate. Fortunately, another one of his Lieutenants saved him. She pointed out, “We still have a long way to go. Voyager is still out there and we must link up with her. If we redesign the ship for our sake,” she motioned about the room indicating all the engineers, “most of us will be sick of travel before we get there. No, we have to keep the crew happy and comfy.” Gordon would have put it almost in the same words, but coming from one of the “troops” brought the idea down a notch from the nebulous strategies of the hierarchy, to the able hands and minds of professionals charged with concerns closer to the hearts of the crew. Had he told the woman to speak out before the engineers gathered, it couldn’t have worked out better. Since she had volunteered it without prompting of any kind, Gordon was even more impressed. No wonder Peyter was proud of them. “Well we can’t just run wild with our ideas yet,” the first man said. “True,” Gordon said. “I have a design for the ship I want all of you to study and review. Bear in mind this is a very rough draft of what I have in mind. Feel free to criticize, add, detract, improve, or refine anything you find, but by the time the dry dock is finished, I want your last judgment filed and supported and not while we have the ship torn apart. Agreed?” They nodded agreement. Angela Semmes ground her teeth until crewmen across the bridge recoiled from the sound. Her hands gripped the arms of her command chair hard enough to break seven out of ten of her manicured nails. Anger was not adequate to describe the feeling she endured that moment. Frustration was not sufficiently enormous a concept to fill the gap. Peyter survived! That dumb little Russkie survived a direct assault by Hirogen hunters? How dare he do this to me? How dare the Hirogen fail me so? How dare my crew hide their seven-year failure to destroy one puny little cruiser behind a Hirogen miscalculation? Beside her, King waited patiently for the next outburst. Semmes never took news well. Good news, bad news, it didn’t matter; if something upset her fixed view of her experience, she was liable to explode. In one sense, that made her perfect for Section 31. After all, she would fully engage her passions to bring Section 31’s agenda into line. But King had his doubts that a desire to affix the current order of things was really what was needed in a commander. Weren’t they supposed to be flexible? Wasn’t a gifted commander to know how to turn the advantage in any situation? With remarkable calm Semmes asked, “Do we know their current position?” The tactical officer answered, “No, Captain, we never had a firm fix on their position before or after the engagement.” “What about a warp trail?” Semmes asked. Science Officer Lt. Commander Donald Green saw this as his cue and informed her, “Impossible to sort out. Hirogen ships swarmed the area and began a standard search of the nearby systems.” Semmes had to scoff at that one. Hirogen search patters made almost no sense from a systematic point of view. Hirogen Chieftains tended to follow gut instincts and follow them to the ends of oblivion. Others were motivated by jealousy to follow or simply point their ships in the opposite direction of rivals and determine an equally absurd destination to examine. “What about a Starfleet signature to the warp fields?” Green shook his head. “I can only assume they significantly damaged their warp drive in some fundamental way. Not one trail matches Pioneer’s.” Semmes regarded her Science Officer with icy distain. What good are you to me if you can’t meet my needs? She asked the man silently. Aloud she ordered, “Don’t make assumptions, Mr. Green. We are engaged in deadly business here. I don’t think I’m willing to bet our actions against your assumptions.” Green paled under Semmes abuse, and gratefully returned to his station when she moved on to the next item on her agenda. “How long till our arrival in the area?” Semmes asked the Navigator Lt. Commander Dar Moth. “Three weeks, Captain,” the man answered. “Try to trim some time off that, Mr. Dar Moth,” she ordered. Considering her options, Semmes wished once again that she had defied Admiral Forrestal and simply destroyed Pioneer herself. It would have been a popular move among her crew, and she doubted the distant Admiral could have affected her removal had she given the order. But that sort of insubordination left a vast gulf between the order of things before such an act and the reality created by consequences. It would be like turning to a life of crime. The day a man murders he is forever afterwards a murderer. The hour a man steals marks the beginning of the time he shall spend as a thief. The instant a man forces himself on a woman he is forever afterwards a rapist even if he was a good man in days gone by. Semmes would not give up her grace lightly. After all, she had the elimination of 815 at the forefront of her mind, but for now the toll was unknown and the possibility existed that she had the full tally yet to claim. If it could be done quickly, with the full blessing of Section 31, she might be able to sidestep the consequences for herself and her crew. Angela Semmes would do many things for Section 31, but like all of the hierarchy of this most pragmatic of organizations, she would not abide an instant of shame for it. There would never be a day she would not hold her head high with pride in what she’d done. Shame was for victims and the oppressed. Shame was to be born by Peyter Koon and the crew of USS Pioneer. Koon managed three hours of sleep before Speer came to wake him. At first, he couldn’t recognize his head of security. Dermal regeneration had healed much of the damage, but the man was completely bald. A strange metal eye-patch was savagely clamped over his right eye giving the ordinarily handsome man an ominous expression. Speer’s usual athletic grace was stilted and stiff today. On occasion, the young man stiffened in pain for no apparent reason, and his concentration was clearly fragmented into short, painful bursts that bent the man over to endure. “You shouldn’t be on duty, Commander,” Koon said, “In your condition I’d…” Speer was impatient and cut his Captain up short, “If it’s all the same to you, Captain, my quarters were blown away yesterday, so I might as well work.” Koon felt genuine concern for the man, “Adam, you need rest.” Speer shook his head. “When I heard about this, I knew I couldn’t sleep until I presented it to you.” He passed Koon a data pad. Peyter took it gingerly. Weary wasn’t close to describing how he felt. Blasted flat to the ground more like. Before he’d gone to bed, Koon had been up for three days, give or take a few hours, in preparation for the flare jump in addition to the hours he’d spent sorting out what had to be done to the ship. It seemed he’d just eased into bed, when Speer came calling at the door with one more detail. One more thing for him to… Peyter’s mind did a double take on what he held in his hand. He looked back to Speer for confirmation and the tall, injured man gave a nod. Returning to the report in his hand, Koon read its contents carefully. He had a good memory for things he read. Something about the process of translating words he could see into thoughts he understood made an indelible impression on his memory, a trait that had been of indispensable value during his life. Even though Koon could read at an astonishing 80,000 words per minute, he read this report with all the care he could muster for several long minutes. He set the report aside, pronounced it, “Remarkable!” and immediately began to calculate how the balance of reality would shift aboard his ship. “I’ll see him at once,” Koon announced and marched briskly for the door. Speer followed painfully in his wake. Koon knew this news had to injure the younger man in very fundamental ways, but Koon had to hand it to Speer: he was being downright stoic in bearing the news so frankly. A lesser man might have made an attempt at spin control, but Adam Speer had presented the bald, unflattering facts without hesitation or fear. A few minutes later, the two men stood in the brig. In the first cell lay the heap of the alien they had captured. As remarkable as this being was, both men marched right past the invader and stopped in front of the next cell in line. Behind the containment field, gingerly cradling his hands in his lap sat Lieutenant M’rath. The man stood at attention when Koon appeared. “Hello, Captain,” M’rath said. “You have something to tell me, Lieutenant?” Koon asked mildly. M’rath nodded. “It is my sad duty as a member of this crew to report that I am,” he paused as seemed to gather himself, “a mole.” He pronounced it in a gust of breath as if he didn’t trust his faculties to confess his crimes except in a short burst. Koon was stony faced. “Can you tell me more, Lieutenant?” A wave of unfamiliar emotion washed over the man’s face before he replied. Koon thought he detected relief there. “A great deal indeed, Captain. A lifetime more.” Koon stared at him intently. “Go on.” “My parents are Romulan, I am Romulan, and I have awaited the order from my Tal’ Shiar’ masters to activate my mission for my entire life. I have the frustrating duty to inform you, Captain, that I have no idea what those orders were to be, only that I was to obey them.” “And why are you telling me this now, Mr. M’rath?” Koon asked. M’rath took a deep breath and searched his heart for the right words. “I can’t live like this anymore,” he said. His voice cracked and a tear rolled down one of his cheeks. “I’m exhausted, Captain. I can no longer suppress my emotions to portray a Vulcan for another instant. What I did to that poor creature in the next cell has convinced me that doing so will endanger the lives of people who trust me, and my life as well. I want to live my life as I am not as who I’ve appeared to be.” Koon folded his arms in front of him and stroked his chin thoughtfully. He hadn’t shaved before he marched down here, and the stubble on his face felt sharp under his fingertips. This man had been right under his nose for years, and he had never suspected a thing. Pity that such a talented operative worked for the other side. Or was it? Of all the things Pioneer had discovered out this way there wasn’t a single item he wouldn’t gladly share with anyone. In the scientific arena, the discoveries were bland almost to the point of being esoteric. There were only two first contacts made on this mission so far. Three if one counted the aliens of the day before. Aside from the hostility of their most recent acquaintances, he could think of nothing terribly shocking about any of them. Down in engineering, Gordon had made a few advances in warp core durability and maintenance, but nothing strategically sensitive. The man inside the cell had access to the most sensitive systems aboard the ship, but the Nebula-class was not designed to be a warship (that was more the Galaxy-class’ element) nor was she the embodiment of revolutionary design (once again more along the lines of the Galaxy-class.) Instead, Pioneer and her sisters were intended to be dependable, durable, adaptable frames that embodied the lessons learned at a very basic level about starship design and construction over the past two hundred years. The Nebula’s were intended to be a workhorse ship while other classes were meant to be showpieces. In a strategic sense, Pioneer had nothing to offer Romulan intelligence they couldn’t find out for themselves or ask for openly. The operative inside the cell knew that as well as Koon did. “Mr. Speer,” Koon said as inspiration struck him, “see to it Mr. M’rath gets the medical attention he needs when it becomes convenient for Doctor Fahdlan.” “Aye, sir,” Speer replied. “Mr. M’rath, you’ve found me at a bit of a loss right now. I really can’t spare you,” M’rath and Speer gaped at Koon in astonishment. “However, I cannot deny that a possible conflict of interests exists between your Romulan orders and my mission. So I will ask you to explain any conflict you know of or can foresee.” M’rath was speechless. Speer was dumbfounded. The standard procedure for treason was an immediate inquiry followed by court-martial, and incarceration or deportation. Mercy of any kind wasn’t to be found on the list. Koon was ignoring the rules in a big way. If high command found out, no if’s and’s or but’s, he would be tried for treason himself and convicted without a hitch. “Sir, I…” Speer began to protest, but Koon brought him up short. “This mission had nothing to do with Romulus, Commander. NOT ONE WORD of my orders involves Romulus implicitly or explicitly. In fact, I’d wager we’d have much to tell Romulus if I had a representative aboard that could be used to our mutual benefit.” Koon explained. “I’m more worried about those newcomers we met yesterday and Voyager.” “If only you knew, Captain,” M’rath blurted. Koon smiled graciously, “Then explain my errors to me, Mr. M’rath.” M’rath thought about it carefully before he answered. “For one, Captain, we have vital star charts no one else has mapped out.” “Charts I will gladly show anyone who wishes to see them,” Koon countered. “You don’t understand, sir, Romulus would do anything for those charts to remain forever blank to their enemies… or allies for that matter,” M’rath explained. “It’s not that you’re willing to show them freely, it’s that they will see power in silencing you.” “Silence is a difficult source of power to maintain,” Koon pointed out. “It tends to consume far more resources than it saves in the long run.” “Resources my superiors will gladly tend to so long as they see security in it,” M’rath argued. “Surely you don’t believe they will allow you to keep, let alone distribute, this sort of information if they can have sole domain over it.” Koon eyed the man skeptically. “Do you believe in the utility of such wasteful nonsense, Mr. M’rath?” M’rath looked cornered. “No I don’t,” he admitted. “The burden of my secrets almost crushed me. I can’t see that being useful on any scale.” Koon nodded. “That’s really what this interview is about: what you believe, Mr. M’rath. I’m willing to let your actions spell out your beliefs. They are certainly more eloquent than your intentions. Right now, I imagine a great deal of confusion for you in this area. Am I right?” M’rath agreed with a weary nod. “Very confused, sir,” he said. Koon beamed at the man. “I’m willing to work through this with you in exchange for your complete honesty from here on out, if you’re willing.” M’rath looked confused. “But I’m a traitor!” he protested. “We can’t let him wander free around the ship,” Speer added with alarm. “We must have some measure of security.” “Indeed, Mr. Speer,” Koon agreed. “But it must be pointed out that you and I have allowed a mole to exist fatally close to us for some time now.” He appraised M’rath with cold resolve. “We would do well to learn as much as we can from him.” “Excuse me, sir?” Speer asked now completely confused. “I want you to work closely with our home-grown traitor from now on, Mr. Speer. He clearly knows the game better than we do. Perhaps we can make some use of his skills,” Koon speculated. “That makes you a fool, Captain,” M’rath pronounced coldly. Koon shrugged. “I think that’s been made crystal clear by your example, Mr. M’rath,” he said lightly. “And my mother was not one to suffer fools, so it’s up to me to reform my ways. You can either be a part of it and lend your best efforts to this crew and its survival, or you will perish on the strength of my skills. What do you say?” Commander Porter stood at attention as Admiral Ross reviewed what was left of Admiral Forrestal’s command. Deactivation of an entire fleet was a rare, and oddly sad, experience Porter had to admit. Plain of the faces of all the other officers around him was the strong sense of loss they felt. The end of a distinguished organization had landed on their watch, and no one was glad or relieved the end had come. A few of them had expressed a desire to retire from service along with Forrestal, but for the most part those who chose to stay would be scattered to the four winds in a minor reshuffling of postings and commissions. The larger majority of the Federation 14th Fleet had already been absorbed into the rest of Starfleet leaving only the Flag Staff to attend to the final details. None of the Captains attended the ceremony. Their disgust with Starfleet for allowing their jobs to founder so haphazardly was well known and in particular, their enmity towards Forrestal was the subject of heated conversations throughout all the Fleets. On Forrestal’s watch, no fewer than four ships had met untimely ends, and they had been the catalyst for disbanding the 14th. USS Endeavor had run afoul a nasty tear in space on her way to explore the galactic heliopause four years ago. USS Calcutta had been caught inside the Romulan Neutral zone and had managed to limp to safety before she had to be abandoned and destroyed. Before that, USS Hokkaido had vanished on its mission to explore the Horseshoe Cluster and was presumed destroyed by the native inhabitants of the region. And six years ago USS Pioneer had disappeared into the dust cloud surrounding the Galactic Core never to be heard from again. USS Voyager’s and USS Equinox’s subsequent disappearance deflected much of the accusations of mismanagement. The point was made that space was far from the safest frontier to wander, and Forrestal was allowed to deactivate his command rather than hand it over to another Admiral. It was the Captains’ argument that Forrestal was disgracing those below him so that he could retire in relative peace. Porter understood their outrage. On the other hand, Porter could not understand Forrestal’s motives. The Admiral had taken the loss of each ship with surprising grace. One could almost claim the man considered this kind of peacetime losses to be routine. The mandatory inquiries had been filed, but Forrestal had not pressed them with much energy. He appeared content to write letters of condolence by the hundred rather than raise a hand to prevent further losses. Porter knew that the 14th fleet was suffering from a desperate personnel shortage, the sole exception being the ill-fated Pioneer lost with a full, and very young, crew not long after Forrestal had assumed command of the 14th. After her loss, Forrestal struggled to keep ships skeletally manned and seemed unable to recruit enough people to fill the rosters. Even though the 14th Fleet was not the largest one in the Federation, (that distinction fell to the massive Klingon Blood Fleet fully two billion souls strong) and massive infusions of crewmen from other fleets, Forrestal seemed incapable of keeping his ships adequately manned. The numbers simply didn’t add up. The 14th needed eighty-thousand personnel at full strength give or take, and Porter knew Forrestal had stripped the other fleets of almost every man they could spare. All told, Porter had signed off on the transfer and recruitment of a full seventy thousand crewmen. A staggering triumph in administration to be sure, but all of Forrestal’s ships had been screaming for people for the better part of eight years. Through ordinary losses (retirements, transfers, promotions, and so on) the fleet had lost ten thousand people over the last eight years. Through off-duty accidents, they had lost another two thousand. Through on-duty accidents (barring the loss of the four ships) they had lost about five thousand. Through the loss of the four ships they had lost almost twelve-hundred people (two thirds of them aboard Pioneer.) That meant that less than nineteen thousand people were lost over the span of eight years. A full tally of suspected or confirmed dead ran near or above two thousand people, most of those on the lost ships. In a peacetime Fleet, those kinds of losses were ten times that of the acceptable norm. And now they were disbanding. With the Borg incursions sill fresh in Federation memory and the Dominion War beginning to get ugly (if sporadic,) the disbanding of an entire fleet seemed downright foolish. Every Captain in Starfleet had said as much, but Admiral Ross had accepted Forrestal’s proposal and this was the last act of it. “An ignominious end to the 14th,” Ross commented bitterly. He appeared upset by this turn of events, and he wasn’t ashamed to show it. It wasn’t that he was deactivating ships he needed; they were to be transferred to other units bloodied by the desperate fighting of the previous years. Instead, he was upset by the hole this was going to leave in the command structure. His Fleets were in desperate shape and needed the ships and men just to remain effective units no doubt, but Fleets offered specific options and performed specific functions from one to the next. For instance, he could ask the First Fleet for troubleshooting and First Contact missions, and feel secure that they had both the people and the command structure to support those missions. He could ask the Ninth Fleet to handle a full-scale battle, and rest easy in the knowledge they could handle the task. The 14th’s forte had been pure exploration and science with a flare for reconnaissance and scouting. Ross had to admit science and exploration had to take a backseat to more urgent matters at present, but the loss of those abilities would never be fully regained for decades. It was a fine point to make, but Forrestal had been persuasive. The 14th was not designed for combat. It was in the best interest of the Federation to use the resources of the 14th to more immediate needs. It disgusted Ross to demure to the other man’s judgment. Forrestal seemed grim yet vitally charged with energy. His stride was purposeful and oddly proud. He all but dragged Ross around once the man arrived at the Headquarters building in San Francisco. Porter visibly flinched when his boss introduced him to the CSO (Commander Starfleet Operations) because he didn’t want to be here. “Commander Porter, this is Admiral William Ross,” Forrestal said. Porter stood at rigid attention and saluted. He kept his eyes staring at an unfocused point above Ross’s head burning with humiliation. Damn Forrestal! He thought. His name was now closely tied to this shameful business and he wanted nothing more than to choke the man to appease his insulted honor. Ross seemed preoccupied. He returned the salute casually and continued to survey the room full of officers. Down the line were two Rear Admirals that were turning the color of paper and almost shaking with fear. If their names became tied too strongly to the events of this day, their careers would come to an end. Any hope they might entertain of attaining a field command in the ongoing war would be dashed. Porter knew both men opposed Forrestal’s move to disband their units, but neither had the influence to overrule their boss. They were good men caught under the thumb of a lesser man, but Ross wasn’t being told that. Instead, he went down the line of men and faintly acknowledged each. Perhaps, Porter thought, he’s as confused as we are about this turn of events. And that was the most upsetting part of this affair. Forrestal had ram-roded this initiative ostensibly to reinforce the other fleets. A strange move when he had proven his ability to recruit and reassign to his fleet. Why hadn’t he committed his organization to the war instead of dismantling it? If he didn’t have the stomach for what was to come, why not step aside and let someone who did have command? Why did Ross allow such a… confounding action to go through? Ross surprised Porter by saying, “I understand you’ve got a ship.” “Yes, sir,” Porter replied. Ross appeared to search his memory for an instant before he gave up on the endeavor. “Pardon my ignorance, but I’ve forgotten which one it is.” “The Thunderchild, sir,” Porter said, “Executive Officer.” Ross nodded thoughtfully. “A good ship. She’s seen some tough action in recent years. I expect you’ll be quite busy once you’re aboard.” “Yes, sir,” Porter said. Ross seemed to lose his focus and began to project a great gravity about him, “So many are gone now.” “Indeed, sir,” Porter agreed stiffly. How he hated this day! “Give Captain…” Ross trailed off searching for the name. He rubbed his brow and clearly struggled for several moments to recall the Thunderchild’s CO. After a while, he gave up and turned a surprisingly stricken expression on Porter. “I’m sorry; it’s been a… troubling time here recently. Give the CO of the Thunderchild my regards and my heartfelt apologies. I owe that Captain and his officers dinner when they arrive back here.” Porter nodded, “I’ll pass that along.” “Thank you, Commander…” Ross trailed off then shook his head clearly angry with himself. “Dammit! I just heard your name! Now I owe you dinner.” “I’ll bring Captain Kukulius for the occasion,” Porter said. “I’ll look forward to it,” Ross said with a gracious smile. “Good luck, Commander.” As the grim and clearly strained Admiral moved down the line of officers Porter reflected things couldn’t have gone any better with the man. The possibility of avoiding the career-hatchet brightened a touch. In fact, Porter began to look forward to his new assignment. He’d always preferred a fleet station to a flag assignment, and the Thunderchild was one of the jewels of the fleet. Not even a decade old, she boasted all the new features his last fleet posting aboard the Hermes so desperately lacked. Furthermore, Porter’s correspondence with Captain Kukulius was more than a little promising. Unlike the austere and aloof Forrestal, Captain Kukulius appeared to be even-tempered and approachable. He’d been as forthcoming as he could over the subspace net and had cut off conversations with genuine regret Porter thought. He had hopes they would work well together, but his experience with Forrestal had made him a careful man. Damn the man! Why deactivate the fleet? Where did all those people go? Moreover, why was the man so damned overjoyed today? What advantage did he gain today? Why did Starfleet allow this travesty? What had Porter missed to be unable to answer these questions? Frustrated, Porter mulled over the circumstances of the day all through the ceremony. He pondered the finer points on his way to the transport off Earth. He speculated freely on the ship that carried him out of the Sol system. He managed to dismiss it from his mind only moments before stepping aboard his new ship. During all that time, he kept coming back to the start of all his troubles: the day Pioneer vanished. Before that day six years ago, Porter could track a solid record of events. The day after her transmissions ceased, information became fragmented and tangled. What did Pioneer take with her that so unhinged the reality of Starfleet? What secret did Peyter Koon take to his grave that set this confusion rolling? “Dead?” Lieutenant Commander Barney Blackburn asked for the second time. The Captain in charge of delivering the news to Commander Blackburn came with the all too appropriate name of Graves, and nodded sadly to the man before him. “That can’t be,” Blackburn protested. “I spoke with her last week.” “I’m so sorry for your loss, Commander; rest assured you have my heartfelt sympathies…” Captain Graves said as gently as he could before he was abruptly cut off. Blackburn seemed to swell in his slight uniform fully blocking the view in front of Graves. “I rather doubt you can come close to understanding my feelings right now, Captain,” Blackburn growled. “You see, you’re the fourth man to stand in front of me and tell me with the same canned words about the death of someone close to me.” Graves was surprised. Nothing in the report he’d been given said a word about that. Not only that, but Blackburn’s anger was nothing short of mystifying. Blackburn was a short, slight man of about forty years. Soaking wet in his clothes, the man didn’t look an ounce over a hundred pounds. Every image Graves had seen of the man in front of him showed a demurring, stooped, painfully shy man with a balding head and downcast eyes. Those that knew Blackburn described the man as a stumbling, shuffling, mumbling academic who rarely spoke above a whisper. By contrast, the man in front of him was still short, slight, and balding, but the voice erupting from the figure demanded all the attention of a slap in the face. “Four! By God! Four!” Blackburn bellowed. His eyes stared into Graves as though trying to melt the man into his shoes. “One wife lost with her ship during the original Borg incursion, one son lost on his ship during the next, one daughter lost on her way to the Galactic core, and now another daughter, MY LAST LIVING CHILD, lost in the Gamma Quadrant to the Dominion!” The little man shouted this at Graves centimeters from his nose, and Graves found his knees begin to falter under him. As Blackburn spoke again, he stared down the Captain until Graves was sprawled awkwardly across the floor. “What do you know about the empty assurances of Starfleet? What do you know about the feeble-minded diplomats in the Federation that sent my family to their deaths? Can you explain why I must cheerfully sacrifice the blood of my family to advance the ambitions of men sequestered safely away in San Francisco? Do you have the first notion of what I would give to bring my family back?” Graves discovered he was scooting along the floor away from Blackburn who had seemed to grow to the size of a demon in the blink of an eye. “Commander, I…” “I would kill them all with my bare hands to spare them!” Blackburn shouted. “I would rip the throats out of every man west of the Sierras and eat their flesh to bring them back! I would burn Admiral Hays alive over the smoldering corpse of that jackass Bill Ross to save just one of my girls!” Blackburn pointed an accusing finger down at the stunned man on the floor. The hand attached to it shook with rage and Graves had the unsettling notion that the hand would tear free of Blackburn’s arm to gouge out his eyes. “Enough!” Blackburn shouted, “They’ve taken my youth, they’ve taken my family, they’ve taken every scrap of labor my hands have turned since I was a teenager. YOU TELL THEM THEY OWE ME MY BLOOD, AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!!! “Commander, I…” Graves stammered. “SILENCE!!!” the word filled the room until the bulkheads rattled. “Starfleet owes me three children, one wife, and a lifetime. Tell them that!” Blackburn took a step towards Graves who bolted from the room in a panic. A vast quiet settled over the ship as the running steps of the Captain’s feet retreated down the corridor. Slowly Blackburn regained control of himself. Even so, his body shook with emotion, and tears fountained from his angry eyes. The quiet became oppressive, and Blackburn turned his shamed face back to the rest of the people in the room. Every eye in main engineering was locked on him behind expressions of awe. For a long time he faced them with a defiance born before their very eyes. A soft hand slipped onto his shoulder and Blackburn turned to face the owner. Captain Helen Foss regarded him with gentle eyes brimming with tears. “C’mon, Barney, let’s get you away from this place,” she said softly. She slipped an arm around his shoulders. She stood a full head higher than her Chief Engineer did and she could have easily enfolded him, but she simply led him away. Stiffly, on shaky legs, Blackburn followed her. Later he would faintly remember every member of the crew he passed standing still and silent. He would remember shocked expressions and a few tears, but he could never remember a single face. His life ended that day. He spent the next two months on leave on Risa and another six at his home in Michigan, but it did no good. Mustering all the charm he could, he first sorted through the belongings he and his family had accumulated over the span of a quarter century and sold every bit of it. Returning to duty almost a year later, he discovered he had been passed over for promotion. Undeterred he applied for every position he could find and accepted the first reply. Pluto may not have been as far away from his past as he would have liked, but it turned out to be far enough. Pluto Space Yards orbited the tiny rock and its moon Charon in close to total darkness. The world was so small, the station his office was in generated more gravity than the planetoid it orbited. The sun was a distant, cold star still bright in the sky but made alien by distance. Lit by this feeble glow, row after row of starships parked in a slow orbit sat awaiting the day they were either scrapped or called to serve again. Among his more notorious charges would be the original NX-01 Enterprise and two of her younger namesakes. The Excelsior was parked nearby as if Captain Sulu had been reluctant to leave his ship in bad company. Ships of every configuration Starfleet had ever made and a few it didn’t drifted still and lifeless in the gloom, and it was Blackburn’s job to tend to them. Considered a dead-end assignment by every engineer in the fleet, it was a thankless, largely pointless job. Upon arrival, his first duty was to attend to the retirement of the former administrator. Lieutenant Commander Hatfield was a stooped, bearded man of about eighty who had held the position for the incredible tenure of fifty-seven years. While Blackburn had been warned Hatfield was a dullard and anti-social, the older man turned out to be a quiet, thoughtful man with a thin, clear voice and a host of pleasant stories to tell his replacement. Every ship in the yards had a story attached to it, and Hatfield cheerfully went through all he could think of without boring the intense man in front of him. “The job’s a golden opportunity for you, son,” Hatfield explained. “With a little practice you’ll be able to manage your duties in little or no time every day while you attend to more important matters.” “Like what?” Blackburn asked. He found the thin voice and his gentle inflections a soothing balm on his burning grief, and the urge to keep the man talking about anything at all was quite strong. “That’s up to you, son,” Hatfield said. “This place can be as quiet as the grave most days. I’ve found it a wonderful setting for thoughtful contemplation.” Looking around at the small office and the darkened corridors, Blackburn knew without a doubt the place would be quiet and still enough to rival a canvass in oil paint. “What did you think about all this time?” he asked. “I mean you’ve been here for fifty-seven years. What takes all that time to consider?” The old man chuckled. “Women of course! But I might add I have a passion for mathematics I’ve indulged till rapture many a day.” He pulled out a framed parchment and announced, “I received my doctorate five years after I started here. This one’s from Oxford.” He looked speculatively about the room for a bit before adding, “There’s another from Cambridge around her somewhere.” Blackburn was surprised. No one had discussed that at all. “How many do you have?” Hatfield waved a thin and spotted hand at him in a don’t-make-a-fuss gesture. “Only the two. Besides I’ve done more than tinker with the finer points of integrals and derivatives.” “Such as?” “Did they tell you how often I return to Earth?” Hatfield asked. “In truth they never check on me out here, so I’m fairly free to wander as I please.” “So you’ve slacked off your duties all this time,” Blackburn concluded. “Not at all,” Hatfield scoffed, “but the daily chores of this place take about five minutes, give or take. Starfleet brings stuff here to forget about it. That includes you and I.” “How appealing,” Blackburn moaned. “It’s not that bad. I have a family back on Earth, and I’m proud to say all eight of my children know me better than their mother.” That brought painful memories flooding back into Blackburn’s mind, and unflattering comparisons to the older man. Blackburn barely had a chance to know his children before he skipped off to the Fleet or they went off to school. His wife had been a career officer like himself, and they had trusted the upbringing of their children to the grandparents rather than put them in harm’s way out in space. As a result, he barely knew his sons and barely understood his daughter. He should have met this man twenty-five years ago. Trying to bring his mind to more pleasant thoughts, Blackburn asked, “Eight children, you say?” “My oldest is retiring from the Titan Navy in five years. My youngest will be entering the University of Naples next year.” Blackburn had to gape. “You’ve been busy!” Hatfield smiled, “I’ve had a satisfying life out here. It’s all in how you mix your time in this cold place with the warmth you need at home.” Finally, Blackburn could no longer keep his amazement from showing. “Lord, I wish I’d met you when I was twenty!” Hatfield smiled again, but it was a sad smile this time. “From what I understand of your recent history, I’ve no doubt you do.” Blackburn was frustrated by this turn in the conversation and stared angrily at the older man. Hatfield regarded him with fatherly patience. “You have time out here, son. Time to think, time to hope, time to look, and time to find what you need from life. I did. And no matter how frayed your life has become in recent years, my lesson for you is that time provides all the answers you could ever need today.” “I have my doubts about that,” Blackburn growled. “So did I,” Hatfield said. “Time proved me wrong, and I couldn’t be more grateful.” To Be Continued |
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