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Star Trek: Pioneer Rating: R (For language, sexual references, and Sci-Fi violence) Commander King was glad Semmes was asleep. The crew could relax when the threat of her wrath abated. They could talk, laugh, and slouch at their stations. Commander Dar’Moth could tell his lurid jokes that made the female officers blush and the male crewmen bend double with laughter. Donny Green could use the main viewer to display to marvelous constellations they were passing. Murdock and Humbolt could chat about their latest conquests among the female members of the crew. Moreover, Timothy King could talk shop with everybody. It
was refreshing to see the crew, his crew,
as the people they really were. Semmes
ruled over them by fear and an iron will, and that eroded their ability to
express themselves, even in private. However,
Tim King loved to see this side of the Diocletian. He’d come from a small town in They
were good people in general. There were
the occasional bad influences about the various departments, but there was much
to be said about the bonding power of brilliant minds focused on common
goals. The Diocletian, along with her sister ships, had been staffed with the
cream of Section-31’s crop of personnel.
The reasoning went that a fleet filled with the best minds would be the
best fleet. Experience aboard the USS Constantine had proven that theory
flawed when her Captain executed several members of his crew after a
mutiny. The Except one. Angela Semmes was not interested in debate or opinion. She did not want discussion or a fresh perspective. The flourishing community of intellectuals under her command was anathema to her, and she cared less about the concerns of the crew. She considered all the educated conversation pointless. The eggheads under her command would babble until they were buried before reaching a decision, and she wanted action from them. She was respected for her ability to settle arguments between her departments, but she was feared for her ever having to intercede at all. If she did put her foot down, she took away the pride of everyone involved along the way. She was so notorious for shattering individual resolve, that the ship’s Councilor had dubbed it the “Semmes’ Effect” after seeing more than eighty crewmen in a row with identical nervous breakdowns. Her abrasive personality aside, she was precisely what the Diocletian needed her to be: tough, decisive, and focused. Her function was to make decisions, and she could supply those on demand without hesitation. King saw himself on the other side of the equation. If Semmes monopolized the decisions, he provided the options and opportunities. The Captain harvested what he grew from the minds of the crew. He nurtured their faculties and teased their best efforts out of them, while Semmes only sat back to pick-and-choose. He found the work fulfilling. In his crew, he could find whatever he needed. More often than not, he found more than he needed. He kept their morale high, but he did not always find it easy. Donny Green waved him over to his station not long before King was about to retire for the night. “We have a problem, sir,” he said darkly. “A dozen or so warp trails appeared over the one we’re following.” King noted Green had not labeled the trail as Pioneer’s. “How does that affect tracking them?” he asked. Green made an exasperated face before turning back to the display. “They could’ve launched their shuttles,” he explained. “Their warp signature was never easy to pick out.” “How so?” “Their warp drives distorted subspace into a morass once they went past warp 3. The Starfleet Bureau of Design and Testing fixed the problem by deliberately adding a flutter in the wake of these things. Subspace out there is so churned up I can’t pick out our wake behind us.” Green waved airily towards the stern of the ship with a disgusted scowl. “If it had been one or two shuttles, we’d have done alright, but the trail is so wide, they must’ve launched at least half their compliment.” “An evacuation?” King wondered aloud. Green twisted his face up into a scowl. “That’d be an option,” he admitted. “Or they could be evacuating the wounded to a friendly system,” Lieutenant Bo Lien said. King and Green turned to the tactical officer. If Semmes had been on the bridge, she would have bawled Lien out for eavesdropping, but King appreciated input unsolicited or otherwise. “What friendly system?” King asked with a hefty note of skepticism. “Along this flight path?” Green added. “It makes operational sense,” Lien pointed out. “Between the Flare and the Hirogen, they took quite a drubbing. Maybe they found a sympathetic world nearby.” Lieutenant Commander Dar’Moth rapped his knuckles thoughtfully against his station. It was a polite, Cardassian gesture to intrude on a discussion, but it was also a nervous tick of Dar’Moth’s. While others scratched their heads, wrung their hands, or fidgeted in place, the Cardassian navigator was constantly rapping, tapping, and thrumming his fingers any surface in reach. Semmes spent two weeks screaming at the man before she broke him of the habit in her presence. “There’s not much out here,” he said when he was satisfied he had their attention. “The Hirogen dominate the sector, and I doubt they would help.” “Gnan could have lured them into a trap early,” King suggested. “Yeah, he wasn’t a bit happy with the Captain’s plan,” Green agreed. “He could be making a quick play to cut us out of the kill.” Dar’Moth and Lien shook their heads in unison. “Too far away,” Lien said. “And in the wrong direction,” Dar’Moth added. “On a psychological level it works, but it falls apart given the current timetable,” Lien expanded. “The Captain dared Gnan to catch Pioneer. That might have angered him enough to move off on his own, but he’s at least half a sector away.” “Well he didn’t call ahead to trap them,” Green said. “I’ve been tapped into the Hirogen net for a week, and they’re not talking about Gnan or Pioneer.” “Let me see a navigation display up on the main viewer,” King ordered. Dar’Moth tapped a few keys and the screen changed. The Diocletian was about a day’s flight time from the point where all the subspace distortions Green was so worried about started. “They made a high speed run at about warp 8 up to here,” Green said and put a target blip along the flight path not far from where the trail ended. “They slowed to warp 1 before the trail gets broken up.” “Any signs of subspace buckling?” Lien asked. “They could be trying to tow the ship with the shuttles.” Green glanced back at his readings before shaking his head. “I wish there was. I could track that.” “What lies ahead of them?” King asked. Dar’Moth projected the flight path straight ahead of the cutoff point. Twenty stars intersected the line before the line stopped. “At warp 1, this is as far as they could have gotten. If I expand the flight path to a spherical projection…” he tapped another key, and a wide field bloomed on the viewer to include another score of stars. “According to the Hirogen net, nothing inside that radius is habitable.” “Could they deliberately be trying to obscure their trail?” Lien asked rhetorically. “I’m not sure this would deter Hirogen trackers,” Green replied. “Their scanners are more effective than ours.” “Surly they would be talking about it over the net,” Dar’Moth pointed out. “They’re not talking at all,” Lien explained. “The Captain’s call to Gnan shut them all up.” “They’re waiting for her to call again,” King said thoughtfully. “The others must be eavesdropping in the hopes of cashing in on the kill.” He paced the deck around the bridge before coming to a stop in front of the main viewer. “We may have stirred the pot a little ahead of schedule.” If the Hirogen were silent, they were waiting to strike, he reasoned. King knew the hunters had several, quite impressive, ways of concealing themselves. Part of the reason for sending the Section 31 fleet out this way instead of moving directly to the Gamma Quadrant was to learn, and perchance enlist, the techniques Hirogen used in combat. The effectiveness of Jem’Hadar in close combat warranted keeping them at a tactical distance. The Hirogen knack for gaining a devastating first strike against prey could expand the tactical options they could use against the Dominion when they arrived. He had no idea how Koon survived his first encounter with the Hirogen, but he doubted it had anything to do with skill. He had tried broaching the topic with Semmes, but she did not want to fritter her time away speculating how, “That damned Yakut avoided his appointment with the taxidermist,” she scoffed before moving onto the next item of the day’s agenda. “Damned Yakut” or not, Peyter Koon was tenaciously refusing to die. Peyter had a lucky streak a light year wide, and he played a smart game indeed, if he was aware the Diocletian was tracking him. Obscuring his trail could be an accidental byproduct of other operations, but King strongly doubted it. Koon had survived the trip out here by making his way through the most convoluted string of cosmic pitfalls Section 31 could make him run through. Timothy King’s professional appraisal of that strategy was not favorable in hindsight. For the past six years, Section 31 had taught Koon’s crew how to handle every serious operational emergency by the most effective method devised: harsh experience. His people were alert, seasoned, and hone to the razor’s edge of readiness long before the Flare all but demolished Pioneer. King had scanned the damage report Koon had filed back to Forrestal personally, and was duly shocked any ship, let alone a lousy Nebula-class vessel, could survive and shelter the frail bodies inside her. Had any other crew encountered such a disaster, King doubted they could have put their ship back together. Koon’s crew, thanks to Semmes’ efforts to kill them, was easily the most experienced with repairing their ship on the fly of any in Starfleet. “How long has it been since Peyter reported to Forrestal?” King asked. Lien shook his head, “Nothing since he broke the Flare down.” Dar’Moth rapped his knuckles thoughtfully on his console. “Do you suppose he’s grown suspicious of us?” “It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” King mused. He paced from one side of the main viewer to the other peering thoughtfully at the potential havens Koon might seek out. Koon had to be aware of the Hirogen threat. He could be covering his tracks to counter the threat they posed. If Peyter had become wily enough to suspect the Diocletian and her sisters hovering out of sight, Semmes would have the authority to force the issue of direct involvement with Forrestal. While that option was attractive, King knew Semmes would insist upon rock-solid evidence she could clobber the old Admiral with. She would also demand to know where “that damned Yakut” was so she might obtain permission and a kill within the same breath. Forrestal reserved the right to countermand his orders at any time, so it was essential to move quickly if he yielded to the obvious solution he had avoided for years. Possible exposure to Federation oversight would be just the tool to bend the intractable John Clay Forrestal into line. “Activate the cloak again,” King ordered. “Recall the probes. We’ll assume they’re heading somewhere along their current flight path.” He turned back to the others and airily waved at the main viewer indicating he was done with it. Dar’Moth returned the display to the forward view. When Semmes woke up, King would suggest alerting the Hirogen to the search area. After all, hunting was what Hirogen were best at. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ten
decks below King, Lieutenant Commander Victoria Collins anxiously awaited a
visitor. She held a PADD before her eyes
and struggled to read it, but her mind refused to focus on the novel before
her. She read the same sentence for half
an hour before giving up and setting the story aside. She doffed her clothes and spread out her
Yoga mat on the deck. She went through
the first round of breathing and stretching before her eyes inevitably settled
on the mirror across the room. She was a
vain woman and had always traveled with a fine, full-length mirror to admire
her beauty. She was justified in her
appreciation. Her immodest appraisal of
her looks only slightly inflated the bonds of reality. Her ebony skin was smooth and fine as that of
a newborn. Her fine features, a gift
from her Thai great-grandmother, framed a set of large brown eyes she used to
snare men under her spell. Another gift
from her Asian heritage was a black drift of fine hair she wore to her
waist. Even in the dim light of her
quarters, the silvery luster of her hair framed her head like a crown. Her athletic frame had lured a fair share of
lovers to her bed. Most of them
delighted, no rejoiced, in her
arms. The heft of her breasts fascinated
them, the strength of her long legs buoyed them, the curve of her back and
buttocks drew them, and her full lips would part to let loose brays and screams
of ecstasy for them. She was a Nubian
Queen the Pharaohs would have drained the Brilliant and beautiful as she was, Lieutenant Commander Collins was frantically preoccupied at the moment. She tried to move through the second round of stretches in her mantra, but lost her balance when she glanced at the mirror again. Perched high on the balls of her feet, with her arms reaching to the ceiling; she caught a glimpse of her profile and recoiled in horror. Her formerly smooth and flat belly had begun to distend from the cradle of her hips. She had to turn her back on the mirror to regain her footing. Every time she saw the slight swelling of her abdomen, her knees refused to bear her weight and she would clatter in a lovely heap on the deck. Facing towards the door that stubbornly refused to produce her visitor; she slipped her hands down to feel the tender flesh just above her hips. Her probing fingers encountered an unyielding knot beneath the skin. It was mildly painful to disturb it. Furthermore, a brush past her large, brown nipples, formerly a favorite sensation, resulted in an irritating shriek of nerve endings. This can’t be happening! She tried to roll up her mat, but her hands shook so badly she could not roll it tightly enough to slip it back inside its storage tube. I was careful, dammit! She raged inwardly. Over the years, she’d had her share of scares. Never a terribly regular girl, she dismissed the first and second month with barely a thought. Four months was another matter, and now she was showing. I can’t have a baby! I don’t want a baby! An
hour later, a discreet knock on the door announced the arrival of her tardy guest. Not bothering to put a stitch of clothing on,
she strode to the door and stood before it as it slid open. Ensign John “Muddy” Murdock gaped at her with
surprise and lust. “What’s the
occasion?” he asked when he managed to regain his breath. He stepped into the room and closed the door
behind him without taking his eyes off her.
What she did next was the worst lay she’d had in years, and she only had herself to blame. She rushed through the seduction, tried to force her arousal, and wound up hurting herself several times before he was satisfied she wasn’t going to enjoy herself. She tried every twisted trick she could think of, but her mind would not let go of her anxiety. Muddy was the father, she had no doubt, and now she was loosing her power over him. She hated him for it. She hated him for doing this to her. She hated herself for attaching herself to this young, selfish boy in the first place. She slithered out from under him and made her way to the bathroom. Muddy followed her. She glared him outside the bathroom before closing the door for some privacy. She stepped into the shower. She wanted to clean the smell of him off her and out of her before she faced him again. “What’s the matter, Vicki?” he asked through the door. She hated him for it. “I’m sorry I was late, but we lost Pioneer’s trail right before my shift ended. Commander King had us all…” “WILL YOU FUCKING SHUT UP!” she shouted through the door. She heard a thump on the other side, and realized with a self-satisfied smirk Muddy had taken a step back from the door in shock. For a long time she stood in the sonic shower waiting for Muddy to recover from her outburst. Forty minutes later, she stepped out. She did not feel clean, but she guessed he had picked up his things and left. She was mistaken. Muddy sat on the deck just outside the bathroom. His hangdog expression melted into an angry one when he saw her. “About goddamn time,” he said before bolting into the bathroom for a long, leisurely piss. When he emerged, he glared angrily at her as she started to gather up his things. “I’m staying here tonight,” he snapped. “These are my quarters, Ensign. You’ll leave when I tell you to,” Victoria announced. She wadded his clothes into a bundle and proffered them to him. Muddy swatted the bundle of clothes out of her hands, and spun her about to face him. “I’m not leaving,” he said calmly. “You’re being insubordinate and…” He cut her off by kissing her hard on the mouth. Even in her enraged state, she melted into it. Muddy Murdock was an excellent kisser. When he pulled away, his eyes were tender again. “How can I make us better?” he asked softly. She tried to find an easy way to say it, but the truth was too big to sugar coat. “I’m pregnant,” she blurted. Muddy’s reaction shocked her. His eyes went wide for a heartbeat before he wrapped his arms around her and joyfully lifted her off the floor. He swung her around in a circle knocking everything off her desk in a clatter. He sat her back down and kissed her again. An instant later, he was gathering her off the floor as her legs melted from under her. His lips rained down on her brow, her eyes, her neck, her ears, and back to her breathless lips again. His arms cradled her to him as if she were no heavier than a toy doll. “This is wonderful!” he exulted again and again. Completely
caught off guard, “Oh, my darling love!” he laughed, “I never hoped you could give me more than you already have. Now there will be so many more reasons to…” “I don’t want a baby!” Victoria interrupted. Muddy barely noticed. “But our baby will be another part of you to love,” he pointed out cheerfully. He shook his head. “Why are you frightened?” he asked. He sounded baffled. “Because I’m not supposed to be a mother!” she barked. “What’s wrong with being a mother?” She couldn’t believe he was being so dense. “Mothers are powerless fixtures around the homes of small men,” she snapped. Muddy shook his head again. “You’ll never be powerless, and you’re too driven to be a homebody.” “Mothers are shrews,” she pointed out. “Only when they feel neglected,” he said tenderly. “I’m too young!” she wailed. “You’re thirty-one,” he chided. “I’m twenty-two, in case you’ve forgotten.” “But I’ll never be free again!” She broke down into tears again. He embraced her tenderly this time, and gently carried her to the bed. She cried against him while he stroked her hair. After
a long time, he spoke softly in her ear.
“ She’d been so upset by the notion of a baby; she had never considered the question. “I… what? Why?” she stammered. “I want to name her Treasure if it’s a girl.” He tipped her face up to meet his eyes. “She’ll be what you are to me, so I want to tell her so every day.” “Treasure?” she was dazed by the idea. “If it’s a girl,” he said wistfully. “What do you want to call it if it’s a boy?” “A son?” Victoria had never considered having a son before. “I… I… could have a son?” “Last time I checked those are the only two flavors they come in,” Muddy chuckled. She wanted to laugh, but the sound was so shaky coming out of her throat it sounded like a moan. “Or it could be a daughter,” Muddy said with a tender brush past her lips. “I’d like to have another version of you around to spoil rotten.” This time she did laugh. “So what if it’s a son?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she admitted, “I’ve never thought about it before.” The rest of the night passed in a daze, but not the kind she was accustomed to. They talked and laughed. They planned for the future. Muddy carefully avoided mentioning something they were going to have to face sooner or later. There was every chance they would not be allowed to keep the baby. Captain Semmes despised children and had overseen five abortions already. To her line of reasoning USS Diocletian was a warship and children did not belong here. The crew was not even supposed to fraternize let alone copulate and reproduce. The shapely
Captain had a failing for a few more of the crew she was anxious to hide. Semmes had even come in for a case of
venereal disease Muddy did not appear to care. He talked on and on about what a good mother she was going to be, how hard he was going to try to be the best father ever, and how much he loved her. He treated her with a deference she had never experienced before. He did not quite carry her about on a pillow, but had she asked, she had few doubts he would. Never in all the years and all her lovers had she made anyone so fundamentally happy. It inspired awe in her she never imagined. She’d always supposed the threshold of motherhood to be a dreary frontier not unlike being cast out of Paradise for Adam and Eve. However Muddy’s reaction caught her completely off guard. The joy he expressed was unsolicited and infectious. Suddenly they had an entire constellation of new things to discuss that were… well… fun to think about. It was almost like playing with her dolls when she was a child only now she had a man before her gleefully going along with it. When they finally nodded off late that night, they both slept fitfully. Muddy kept waking up and cuddling closer to her. Victoria kept having nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat. For better or worse, she decided she wanted the baby if for no other reason than to satisfy her own curiosity. What if she had a son? Would she be proud of him? Would he love her? And most important, how could she preserve this life from the wrath of Captain Semmes? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aboard Pioneer a similar scene was playing out. “Who’s the father?” Koon asked the shame-faced young woman across from him. Emily Blackburn cradled her belly in her arms and stared at the deck. She’d cried herself senseless before arriving so she wouldn’t break down in front of her Captain. So far it was working. “Commander Garrett,” she admitted dully. “We were seeing each other for about…” Koon waved a hand. “That doesn’t matter now,” he interrupted with a laugh. “It only takes a moment to set this sort of thing in motion.” Emily felt a twist of anxiety in her chest. “What do you want me to do?” “Well,” Koon drawled in his thickest Russian accent, “In another time and place I’d insist you visit a church and pray for the soul of your child. In yet another time and place I’d rant patriotic slogans at you. However we’re in the middle of reinventing ourselves so it is a time of much educated guess and crystal ball.” Koon tapped a control on his desk and a schematic of the new ship appeared. “Lucky for you I thought of incorporating a nursery into the new deck plan,” he said and pointed out the compartment to her on the screen. Emily hadn’t expected this. “You’re not upset?” “Not at all,” Koon chuckled. “I will insist on a few things though.” Dread surfaced in her heart. “Such as?” “You must go to Doctor Fahdlan and obey his instructions regarding your condition. Once we find out everything’s alright, I insist we announce this to the whole crew,” Koon said with a widening smile. Emily was relived. Her primary concern was that Captain Koon would insist on secrecy. He had the authority to have the fetus transferred into cryogenic storage until he felt the time suitable to bring the child to term, but it hadn’t appeared to have crossed his mind. Given the frazzled state of the crew and the dilapidated condition of Pioneer he had every motive to keep this from his people in an effort to shield them from yet another concern. She pointed this out to him before she could stop herself. Koon shook his head. She noticed streaks of white peppering his black hair. His unshaven stubble from a full day on duty, looked like a coating a sugar across his jaw and under his nose. Had it all gone white since the Flare? “This is good news, Emily,” he chided gently. “I’m not sure I agree under the circumstances, Captain,” she said. He held up a hand to placate her. “Children are a good thing. Are we in agreement, Emily?” “But the ship is in a shambles! This is hardly the time to have brats crawling all over the ship,” she pointed out. Koon turned thoughtful. After a long silence he asked, “Are you afraid, Emily?” She opened her mouth to object only to shut it again with a click. She was afraid of being a single mother. “This baby means the end of my life as I know it,” she admitted. “True,” Koon agreed with a nod. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.” “But I’m alone. Joshua is gone,” she said. “This ship is too small to allow that to happen,” Koon assured her. “I’ll wager you’ll have more help than you can use before long.” Hope slowly reached into her and eased her worries. “You really think so?” “I can’t be sure of it from the crew, but speaking for myself I’d love to help out,” Koon admitted. “It’s been a long time since I’ve held a baby. My daughters are in their twenties right now.” He chuckled, “God, I’m getting old! My baby is… what..?” he calculated for a heartbeat, “Twenty-one?” The thought of Captain Peyter Koon strolling about the ship with a baby cradled in his arm was so preposterous she laughed. Koon smiled again. “You don’t have to agree with me, Emily.” “It’s just the image of you wandering about the ship with a baby is so ridiculous,” Emily giggled. “I’ve done it before. My little Natalya had the entire USS Caspian Sea wrapped around her finger when I took her on a tour of her poppa’s ship. I still claim she got me promoted to first officer because Captain Jared wanted to see more of my darling girl.” Emily laughed. “Will my baby get me promoted?” Koon shrugged, “Maybe,” he said with a laugh. They talked for another hour about his kids and babies in general. It was a subject he warmed to with surprising cheer. During all the years she’d known him, Koon had not been one to speak of his family at all. It was a wonderful shock to know he was a loving, if largely absent, father. He told her how his wife and he had alternated fleet assignments to raise them. One year his wife would stay on Earth and take a headquarters post while he went on a cruise. The next year they’d alternate the arrangement. In this way, his Natalya and Anna had known both their parents despite their long absences. When the mission to the Core came along, Peyter took the job only because he didn’t trust another Captain to get it right. At the same time his wife took command of USS Endeavor and a mission to visit the Galactic Halo. Natalya and Anna had been left with their grandparents, and it worried Koon to no end. He hadn’t liked leaving them behind, but taking them along on a crowded ship for several years was just asking for trouble down the road. In retrospect he wished he’d brought them anyway. The talk of his family changed the man Emily knew so well as her Captain. His eyes twinkled when he recalled his elder daughter Anna riding a horse for the first time. He laughed unreservedly when he remembered his little Natalya crawling into bed with his wife and himself during a rather intimate moment. He grew dreamy when he described how beautiful his wife was with his girls. Emily could see shadows of how he regarded everyone aboard Pioneer in the pride he felt for his family. Upon consideration, it was a good place to be. If Koon felt even a fraction of the devotion he had for his family back on Earth, his crew was in good hands. Koon let her leave about two hours later, albeit reluctantly. There were things to do while the new life slowly grew inside Emily. He wondered after she left how many more of the women aboard would wind up in a family way in the coming weeks, months, and years. Truly it cheered his heart to hear the news. Children had a way of making good people into better ones, and he had an entire crew full of good people. On the other hand, it did mean some of his good people were doing some rather naughty things in their spare time. That was only natural, but he wondered if it was already out of hand. He knew of a few couples aboard, but the news of Emily and Joshua had blindsided him. If everyone wasn’t careful, things could get ugly before anyone had a clue what was happening. Emily’s announcement to the crew should yield some good results in that regard he hoped forlornly. After a long time, Peyter allowed himself to wonder about his family. In an odd way he felt a sense of loss when he considered them. What did that mean? His ingrained Russian superstition had lists of grim answers to choose from that he didn’t want to consider. After seven years of lukewarm correspondence, his wife and daughters could have moved on without him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Why is the cloak back on?” Semmes snapped the next morning. King explained his reasons but he knew she wasn’t listening. Angela Semmes didn’t like being out of the decision process. It was her habit to micromanage to an excruciating degree. She’d designed the command structure like a pyramid with her at the apex, but that didn’t mean she lent much trust in those she delegated tasks to. She wasn’t a scientist or an engineer, but she was a skilled administrator in the day-to-day workings of the ship. She tended to think in terms of resources whenever a command question came up. The most coveted resource aboard the Diocletian was manpower. Even though the dreadnought had an enormous crew by the standards of the regular fleet, the Diocletian was a labor intensive. 700 man-hours were required each shift to maintain the heavy weapons alone. The cloaking device worked almost without consideration, but the havoc it caused with the warp drive kept her engineers buzzing about the ship tending to varied disasters. A full quarter of her effective labor on any given day was consumed with maintaining the ship immaterial of what the ship was doing. Accidents, infrequent as they might be, could consume up to a week of the whole crew’s efforts. Then there were several projects Section 31 wanted Semmes to prosecute by nature of her unique geographic position. Section 31 had an extensive, if shady, scientific department called “The Basement” by most of Section 31 as a term of endearment. This belied how deeply it was resented by the people who had to obey its directives. Overseen by warring commands within Section 31, The Basement delighted in making life beyond the safe confines of their laboratories difficult. Semmes dreaded messages out of the Basement since they were tailor-made to aggravate everyone who saw them from her on down. During her long pursuit of Pioneer, she’d sent some of the Basement’s more tedious chores to Koon’s people to erode the morale of his crew. It worked until the Basement discovered her duplicity and started sending stuff for Pioneer as well. The real problem with the Basement and its experiments was how badly it drained her man-hours every time they sent something. On five occasions she’d been forced to devote several hours of the Diocletian’s full computer core power to the Basement; wrecking anything she hoped to accomplish in the same timeframe. Under normal circumstances, it kept her scientists working around the clock delegating projects she needed done into their spare time. Then there was the command crew. Organizing 2,500 humans and aliens into an effective crew wasn’t easy given the wide variety of different species and skills aboard. She had fifty species and sixteen required specific diets, causing a drain on her resources to store away the data required to replicate it all. Also she had twenty-five doctors aboard to tend to the specific anatomies in detail. Each doctor was qualified to be CMO in their own right and egos were constantly flaring in the five sick bays around the ship. It didn’t help Semmes had appointed a self-important Lieutenant Commander named Victoria Collins to the job. Collins was brilliant, vain, and uncaring of the feelings she stepped on. The doctors under her resented her status and made frequent calls to Semmes to mediate disputes. It didn’t help one bit Semmes didn’t trust Collins and despised the whiny egos that came knocking at her door with grievances. A more diplomatic Captain, such as Koon, might have solved the problem with the doctors by firing Collins or delegating the chore to another officer. Instead Semmes tackled her misbehaving doctors with crushing discipline for five years until the problems mysteriously vanished. Unbeknownst to Semmes, King had stepped in to add a measure of tact to the escalating crisis. He solved the problem in a remarkably short time. Before he’d taken charge, each of the sick bays specialized to accept only a few of the species aboard, King divided up the specialists and turned the sick bays into a general admission status. He’d noted most of the conflicts arose from doctors arguing over how to treat patients. Since more than one doctor in a specialized sick bay could diagnose an ailment, they took to arguing over whom had the final say in treatment. By spreading them around, he’d more or less made each of the specialized doctors into their own authority inside their various sick bays. Since the reshuffling was almost cosmetic in nature, Semmes hadn’t noticed the change yet; however, she hadn’t complained either. It was one of the many ways King made the Diocletian work for Semmes, and she resented him for the things she was aware of. She took out her frustrations on him at every opportunity. She could make hard decisions with barely a skip in her stride, but they always seemed to come back to haunt her. Much of what King did sorted itself out after a little applied effort never to rear its head again. She hated that she couldn’t manage the same thing herself with one brisk command. It never occurred to her King didn’t solve problems that way. “Activating the Cloak is my decision!” Semmes snapped. “I realize that, sir,” King said patiently, “but if you’ll agree with me, the tactical situation is getting dangerous.” “More dangerous now that you’ve cut my sensor coverage in half,” Semmes argued. “Consult me next time before any major shift in the operation of the ship is enacted.” King didn’t groan or roll his eyes, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t sorely tempted to do both. He hadn’t disturbed Semmes because she wasn’t alone last night. King knew who the crewman was this time, but that would change sooner or later. Semmes tired of her playthings easily. He’d disturbed her only once while she was occupied with someone in her quarters, and the experience was not one he was anxious to re-live. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she had made him suffer for the intrusion for over a year. Taking an ass-chewing for leaving her alone would be forgotten by lunchtime. Semmes regarded the tactical display thoughtfully after her tirade was over. At length she spoke again. “He’s heading into the Hirogen network again.” King had told her as much before, but he sensed she had an idea apart from the obvious truth of this statement. “They’ll feel comfortable hunting inside their net more than near the Great Barrier,” she said. “If we deactivate the net in this sector, they’ll think Koon did it and come running.” She ran the tips of her fingers over her palms as she considered the problem. “Gnan might feel cheated if we don’t point him in the right direction. Tell the puppeteer desk to get ready. I’m going to talk to the good Chieftain again.” “He’ll be angry,” King warned. “He might not take the lead and run off.” “Then we’ll have to pick a fight with him,” Semmes said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Levran didn’t like the message. He didn’t like the person who had delivered it, and he especially didn’t like the effect it had on Chieftain Gnan. Whoever it was aboard this USS Pioneer, they had a strange sense of what they faced. Hirogen were predators and lived by absolutes. Toying with the passions of such a race seemed not only foolish but suicidal. The message had been delivered by the same human boy aboard the wayward ship, and the cavalier attitude he assumed was hard to understand. Gnan had spoken to this “David Cabrillo” for over an hour. By the time the link went dead, Gnan was in a rage. The rest of the crew was equally offended and cried for blood. The instant they found Cabrillo, they promised to hang his entrails about his neck and strangle him with them. That wasn’t surprising. Still, Levran found it hard to believe Cabrillo didn’t understand that. He mulled it over in his mind for half the day before he settled on what bothered him: Gnan was being baited. The notion was repulsive to Levran since bait was not the Hirogen way, but it could explain why everyone else was overlooking the idea. He made his way to the Chieftain’s quarters and politely spoke through the door, “Chieftain?” “I don’t wish to be disturbed, Levran,” Gnan replied. “Chieftain, I think we’re being baited into a confrontation,” Levran continued doggedly. He heard a disgusted grunt on the other side of the door. An instant later the Chieftain’s door irised open. Levran stepped through. Chieftain Gnan wasn’t a wealthy Hirogen. The trophies around his quarters were spare and small, but Levran could see a certain flair in them nonetheless. Killing big game was one thing, but finding and killing something no larger than the palm of the hand had its own challenges. Framed in a display case was a beetle no larger than the tip of Levran’s thumb. He admired it for a moment before Gnan strolled up next to him. “Thishan ant,” Gnan explained. “That’s a queen.” Levran was duly impressed. Thishan ants were venomous and remarkably canny. There was cumulative evidence they were telepathic and thus a collective organism with the cumulative intelligence of each colony. A colony of Thishan ants on the move could kill and devour every living thing in a swath three kilometer wide and hundreds of kilometers long only to vanish without a trace. They were resistant to fire by virtue of their ability to burrow quickly into almost anything underfoot. Individuals couldn’t swim, but colonies could bridge rivers by creating buoys out of their used exoskeletons. The only way to stop them was to kill the queen since she was the telepathic nexus of her colony. Finding the queen was the real problem. She was protected by a dense ring of her soldiers and rarely seen above ground. Added to the difficulty was her size and appearance. If she ever was seen above ground, she resembled all of the soldiers surrounding her. There was no way for even a Hirogen to get close enough to pick through the ants by hand, so this trophy had to have been taken some other way. “I stalked the colony for three weeks,” Gnan explained. “I doubt they ever saw me.” Indeed that was nigh on impossible. The ants’ venom could kill a fully grown Hirogen in an instant. All it took was one ant to find an exposed section of flesh to inject a powerful neurotoxin into a hunter. Thishan ants were famous for sending a single scout into the camps of those tasked to eliminate them and wiping out an entire extermination crew. The sentient races of their homeworld had fled to the polar caps to avoid them since the ants couldn’t tolerate the cold. Hirogen hunters had scoffed when they first heard of the ants. None of the first seventy-five hunting parties sent to the Thishan world had returned. “I found a good sightline and picked over the colony with an optical scope,” Gnan continued. “I spotted her when she was laying an egg.” “What killed her?” Levran asked. Most Hirogen weapons would reduce such a tiny target to nothing so this was a pressing question. Gnan pointed to a tiny glint of silver on the queen’s back. “I had to make the weapon myself out of a low power rail gun with a small-bore barrel. That needle is about half as long as she is and no larger in diameter than one of her own hairs. I shot her from five kilometers away and caught her in her venom sack. The whole colony vomited the stuff up at the same time and died when they choked on it.” Levran had to admit it lacked the glamour of larger prey, but the difficulty of the hunt and kill, let alone the recovery of the queen, had to have been extraordinary. The risks involved were just as high if not higher than even the largest Virsn migration fleet. Maybe even higher than attacking the Pfing or their neighbors the Chunn. “Impressive,” Levran said with sincere admiration. “Tedious,” Gnan corrected, “But rewarding,” he added with a smile. “What concerns you, Levran?” “This Cabrillo isn’t who he says he is,” Levran said. “Explain,” Gnan demanded. “He talks to us as if he knows us, yet that can’t be the case if he expects to deal with us for his life.” Levran detailed the previous conversation point by point to make his case. Gnan listened attentively before motioning Levran to silence. The Chieftain paced his quarters in silence for over an hour before speaking. “We need to call in the other clans,” he announced. It was an unheard of move in the present age. It shocked Levran to hear the mere suggestion. “If we’re being baited,” Gnan reasoned, “this Cabrillo person won’t expect to see more than us arrive on his doorstep. There’s simply too much firepower spread around the clans.” “I’m not sure I see how this solves the problem,” Levran said. Gnan turned impatient. “The problem as you state it is that we are being led to prey that might turn against us. Any attempt to threaten the Hirogen must pick off single ships at a time since no race remains in this sector capable of repelling us in large numbers.” “But we’ve never seen this race before,” Levran protested. “They could’ve migrated in from the Delta Quadrant fleeing the Borg.” “Then we’ll have fine hunts in the future,” Gnan snapped. “Send the call out over the net. We’ll find this Cabrillo and make him suffer for the insults he’s forced us to endure, but not before we enjoy our share of the kills.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The surface of Cove-3 was beautiful in its way. The soil had long ago degenerated to sand from lack of an active ecosystem. Dunes stretched out to every horizon, broken only by barren mountaintops dusted in golden mantles of sand snatched from the abrasive seas below. The sky was a brilliant blue between dust storms, and Kree would lie down and stare at it for hours while David explored the city. “Sorry if I’m covered in sand whenever you hold me,” she told him. David shrugged, “I’m right next to you when the stars come out.” Kree laughed. They had volunteered to explore one of the cities so that they might have a little more time alone, and they had been allowed to proceed. However, their shuttle was in high demand, so they were stranded here until someone remembered to pick them up. They didn’t mind. David roamed the city in reverent awe, while Kree became more concerned with their day-to-day needs. In theory they could live out their lives here with the supplies they had, but neither was anxious to test that notion. Kree kept in contact with the other shuttles, reported their findings, and digested all the information coming in from around the system. Whoever had abandoned Cove had left literally everything but the water and the ships that carried them away. Dusty linens hung in closets. Tools lay propped on workbenches next to projects as if the craftsmen were only out for a meal. Every room was furnished in a wide variety of décor. Even the rooms of children lay strewn with toys, as if they had laughed and screamed… then inexplicably went silent and marched away from their play. Several tables had petrified food sitting atop dishes and utensils. David took to calling all of it “surreal” with such frequency Kree demanded he never speak the word in English again. When he offered her the lyrical equivalent in Spanish, she smiled… and sexed him up into silence. On the second morning, David emerged from the city with an alien box under his arm. “Close your eyes,” he commanded. “What’s in there?” she asked. “Close your eyes and I’ll show you,” David teased. She made an exasperated face at him but obeyed. She heard him open the box with a creak of hinges, then felt him settle something on her head that trailed past her ears and down her back to the ground. “Alright, open them,” David told her. David had placed a headdress of sliver feathers on her head. She had seen the headdresses of the Native Americans, and this one resembled them to a great extent. There was a barrette that held the whole thing to her head, but otherwise the headdress was made entirely of silver feathers. She touched one and was astonished to see the silver had been worked precisely to the texture of real bird feathers. When the wind breezed past her, the headdress lofted ever so slightly off her head. “Cold?” David asked. He produced a cloak made in the same manner as the headdress and draped it about her shoulders. This wasn’t a boa ruffled and gaudy to wrap about the shoulders like a scarf. This was a smooth sheaf of feathers in the tradition of Polynesian and Hawaiian royal garb. The effect of this light, silvery cape on Kree’s figure was flattering to say the least. A deeply feminine instinct in her appraised the garment to appease her vanity and judged it worthy of her wardrobe. Her fingers trailed the lining and encountered a delicious soft texture of fluffy down. “Stunning!” she gasped, “it feels so soft!” “I don’t understand it either,” David confessed with a smile. “But I had to see you in it at least once.” Kree rewarded him with a kiss before stepping back from him and twirling about to show off the ensemble. “I can tell you it still feels like feathers,” she admitted. David’s expression darkened into puzzlement. “That’s the thing,” he said uncertainly, “let me show you something else.” He produced a single, silver feather and bent it about savagely. He crushed it in his palm, folded it in half, even stomped on it with his boot, but the feather always returned to the shape it was fashioned in. Kree was horrified at first, but gradually caught on as the demonstration continued. “That strong?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” David frowned at the feather in his hand. “Do you think Gordon needs to see this?” Kree thought about it for a moment before answering. “Anxious to get back to the ship?” she asked. “No,” he admitted, “but what if we could make the ship this strong?” Kree had to admit the possibility was worth examining. She called the nearest shuttle and relayed the message to Gordon. The distant engineer promised to send someone in the morning for them, but for the moment he was far too busy to look into it. David shrugged at the news before glancing at the sky. Gently he slipped the cloak and the headdress back into the box. When he was done, he guided her to the crest of a tall dune and lay her down with her head in his lap. She stared at the blue sky, and he gently traced the contours of her face with his fingertips. “I adore you,” he said with a smile and a flourish of his Spanish accent. “My love,” she told him, “I adore you.” He produced the silver feather again and traced it over her ears and neck. “Am I wrong to adorn you with such treasures?” he asked. She smiled, “Don’t think for an instant I find your taste revolting.” He held the feather up speculatively before his eyes. “A silver bird,” he thought aloud, “Lord, do you think we can top this?” “Certainly,” Kree assured him, and pulled his hand down to her lips. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Ah,” Heartshock said when he saw the images of Cove, “you’ve stumbled across Sanctuary.” Koon and Okuma exchanged a look, but M’rath stared levelly at the Hirogen with a skeptical eye. “Explain,” he asked dubiously. “Five or six thousand years ago, several species banded together on an easily defensible system to protect themselves from us,” Heartshock explained. The huge alien was proving to be a good, even rhapsodic, storyteller. M’rath and the security officers assigned to guard him increasingly treated their time with Heartshock as a prolonged conversation. Heartshock was thrilled to boast about his exploits and those of his people, and he could only marvel at how attentive his audience was. On one occasion the previous week, he told the story of the Hirogen’s expulsion from the Gamma Quadrant to an audience of more than twenty fascinated members of the crew. He found the large audience somewhat unsettling at first, but the rows of aliens sitting on the floor before his cell and standing along the walls listened so studiously he found himself caught up in the drama of the story himself. He found the sessions satisfying and enlightening since his guards were quick to draw comparisons to their own histories. The one who had been reading Virgil during his first exchange with M’rath was introducing the Hirogen to a number of plays the big alien rather enjoyed. M’rath remained a fixture in Heartshock’s day-to-day routine, but his visits seemed only to set the flavor the day would take. For his part, M’rath knew he had to keep Heartshock talking. The information was invaluable no matter how trivial Heartshock considered it. The Romulan reviewed all the conversations the crew had with the hunter, and went so far as to instruct anyone seeking an audience with the Hirogen in the proper etiquette before admitting them. The rules he set down were simple: 1: Take care to treat him as you would a dangerous animal, and 2: Always address him with respect. “So they took the water?” M’rath asked genuinely intrigued. “Still gone after ages have turned the predators of the time to dust along with their prey,” Heartshock mused theatrically. He turned a more analytical expression on M’rath and added, “The system is most dangerous to navigation you realize.” “Yes
we know,” Okuma said laconically. The
strain of piloting all of her ships through the gaps in the static bands had
all but drained her resolve. It took Forte
and the others fifteen hours of careful, methodical flying to map out each safe
path into each planet. She wondered if
Magellan had this much trouble with his fabled Straight, or the latter Drake
and his trip around “Legend has it the water was gathered into an ocean about the size of the smallest of the three inhabited worlds,” Heartshock said. “Though the ocean builders were skilled, and their creation everything it was supposed to be, they made but one miscalculation,” he paused thoughtfully, “the effects of stripping all that water from the system. When they tried to send their ocean into a gateway to a safer system, the star struck at them with solar flares so intense their gateway wavered and sent the ocean to the wrong place. Many died from star’s wrath. More died when the Hirogen noted the star’s behavior and came to investigate. They fought bravely and died only after a hard fight, but they fled the system and left for their ocean far away.” “Which wasn’t where they expected it to be,” M’rath concluded. Heartshock turned thoughtful. “Imagine the heartbreak they must have felt when the new star’s light failed to reveal the ‘Blue Salvation’ of their kind. The shock was so great they fragmented on the spot and almost eliminated each other after thousands of years of cooperative union. A century later, the survivors made another, much smaller ocean, and transported it to a point beyond our net using something called the ‘Bridge of the Dammed’ and we never heard from them again.” “How much of this is historical fact, Heartshock?” M’rath asked politely. The huge alien shrugged, and settled his bulk down on his cot. “The details are a little beyond belief aren’t they?” he almost laughed. “Still, the story is as I told it.” “How can we be sure of that?” Okuma asked. Heartshock eased to his feet like a lion stalking prey. In a slow, fluid motion, he eased up to the security field and peered down at Okuma from his imposing height. “One only need to look at this system to find the truth of what I say, Commander,” he rumbled almost playfully. Heartshock had difficulty remembering and pronouncing names, so he typically addressed everyone by their rank for the sake of convenience. It was clear he held no particular regard for the ranks his captors affected, but he used them anyway. Okuma
glanced at M’rath. The Romulan nodded
back at her, indicating he found what the Hirogen told them plausible. Samantha’s trust in M’rath was gradually
shifting in his favor. When she came
aboard again, she grilled the Captain about the Romulan’s behavior, and was
shocked to discover M’rath had been hard at work with Speer the entire
time. He was pouring over duty logs,
orders, messages, directives from Earth, and even referencing them with his rare
instructions from Returning her attention to Heartshock, Okuma managed to hold his gaze without flinching. “I suppose you’re right, Heartshock,” she conceded, “but why haven’t the Hirogen colonized this place again?” The big alien huffed out a dismissive chuckle. “The place is barren, Commander. We can’t stock this place with game, much less live here. Besides, this place is too hazardous to move about.” The hunter’s attitude annoyed Okuma. How dare he talk down to her! “Sounds like you lack vision,” Samantha snapped. M’rath stiffened beside her. She saw his hands begin to rise from his sides in a gesture to silence her, but he covered it by slipping them behind his back. Heartshock seemed to inflate with anger behind the security field. His white eyes blazed over his bared teeth making him look like an alabaster gargoyle. “That..!” he spat the word at the defiant little shrew as if to slice her face open. Samantha noted she was beginning to crane her neck to maintain eye contact. Was he really getting taller? Then the hunter let out a deep gust of air and sat down. He cradled his head in his hands and stared at the deck of his cell. “I suppose that’s true, Commander,” he admitted. He sounded weary to the depths of his bones. “I can only wonder what my ancestors would tell me if they saw the decline of my house… and my kind.” “I take it they wouldn’t approve,” Okuma said almost smugly. Heartshock met her gaze again and shook his head. “I never noticed it until I actually told someone else, but my species has been on the decline for over forty centuries.” There was a note of amazement in his voice and an expression of horror on his face. “I can’t explain why I never saw it before.” “Is your empire weakening?” M’rath asked almost reflexively. Samantha wondered if the obsession with toppling empires was hard-wired into the Romulan genome. “Is there a faction that would offer us assistance?” Heartshock shook his head. “What empire?” he asked rhetorically. “I’m a noble, and I never wielded power beyond my own ship. The best I can say is Hirogen are bonded by blood.” He thoughtfully considered his words before adding, “For now.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ship was in worse shape than anyone suspected. Peyter read a long list of damage compiled around the ship as more and more of it was dismantled. Even at his demonic speed to absorb the written words it took several minutes to take in. To hear the engineers explain it, Pioneer had been held together by little more than hope and will. Much of the internal skeleton was shattered. Reports from deck 7 claimed the duratanium bracing between the bulkheads was reduced to powder. Only the surrounding decks kept deck 7 from collapse. Nobody had suspected it until this morning. Deck 3 had been evacuated since the Hirogen attack, but the radiation in that section was spreading into the surrounding structure. Everything in that area would have to be discarded since reducing the radiated matter to something usable would burn up every replicator on the ship in short order. As more cropped up, Peyter’s people found excuses to visit the surrounding planets. He didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t mind having an atmosphere close over his head again. He planned a long hike on Cove-3 across a mountain ridge later this week, but for now he was content to manage the refit up close. What Eddie planned to do sounded simple in theory. Each deck would be reconstructed one at a time while the deck directly above it was being demolished. They started with the saucer section since living conditions would deteriorate rapidly once the resources of the shuttles started to give out. Peyter judged they had three weeks before he had to start moving personnel back aboard. Eddie should have at least three fully functioning decks completed in that time out of a total of fifteen. Allowing for mishaps, delays, and outright mistakes, Koon thought Eddie might have at least one deck ready before things started to go critical. It worried him, but not overmuch. Peyter could handle the pressure. He wished he could confide in someone aboard, but that would mean burdening someone with his job. He wished his wife Nancy was here to talk to. She’d been insightful with any dilemma he presented to her. She didn’t always have an answer for him, but she had a way of keeping him pointed in the right direction. Not that he was worried he was doing anything wrong at the moment. He had little choice but to take this precise course of action. The ship was in shambles and had to be restored, the crew was exhausted and needed some rest, and he needed a little time to hide out and survey the situation. He really didn’t know if there was anything to doubt about his decisions, but talking it over with Nancy would be soothing. Instead he was alone with his burdens. Peyter Koon the officer and Captain was a misleading persona from Peyter Koon the man. Captain Koon was aloof and magnificent. Peyter Koon was friendly and flawed. Captain Koon was fatherly and wise. Peyter Koon was anxious and plagued by doubts. Captain Koon could take the deaths of his crew in stride. Peyter Koon was coming apart with grief and wept over every loss in private. It was the age old dichotomy of what it was to be a leader and what one had to be in order to be a man. In many ways Peyter hated being a Captain, or more precisely, he hated what he had to become in order to command. A man could be generous and attentive to those he cared about. A Captain had to be rather callous and downright selfish at times in order to look after the needs of his crew. On the other hand, Captain Koon had much to offer the man who embodied him. The granite will to persevere stoically while those about him collapsed came from the disciplined manner of a seasoned officer not the morally troubled soul of Peyter Koon. Captain Koon could take the long view of the plight of Voyager and find numerous excuses, good ones, why he shouldn’t risk Pioneer in such a foolhardy mission. However Peyter Koon couldn’t accept abandoning Katie Janeway and her people to the mercies of the Delta Quadrant. In an ironic twist, Captain Koon was the only one capable of shifting his long view to the path his conscience demanded without becoming overwhelmed. Only his training as an officer allowed Peyter Koon to accept a mission that was likely to consume the rest of his life. Captain Koon, not Peyter Koon, could accept the bleak prospect the next thirty-odd years promised. Decades of loneliness, years away from his family, and (most important) the inevitable losses he was liable to accrue during that time. That much Peyter understood about himself. What he didn’t understand was how much he’d changed in the past few months. His crew was beginning to see Peyter Koon the Man in small doses, and they were both shocked and endeared by what they were finding. Samantha had seen it when she’d come to speak of her feelings for Forte. Emily had seen it when she’d presented herself to Koon with her pregnancy. The entire crew had seen it when he’d defiantly told them (in not so many words) that Starfleet could be damned and they would make their own way out to Voyager. Slowly, a new appreciation of Captain Koon was emerging just as his command style shifted with the character of the man. His crew would have been able to describe it better than he, but the tone they would all adopt would be one of confidence. Samantha would tell him she trusted him more than ever for slightly selfish reasons. Even with the ship falling apart around her, she felt better than she had in years with someone adoring her as a woman. It helped her deal with the inevitable resentment the rest of the crew felt for her. She knew what she did was essential for the greater good, but the rest of the crew could afford to be short-sighted and petty behind her back. Her blooming affair with Forte took the edge off the sneers and sharp words she endured day after day. Emily would tell him she was grateful for lifting a burden off her shoulders and accepting it cheerfully. Somehow the prospect of motherhood was not the looming threshold of unrelenting toil she’d thought it would be. With Koon’s input, she could look upon the forthcoming child with giddy excitement. She knew she wouldn’t be unfairly saddled with her burden, and not only that, but Koon gently but confidently assured her it was going to be fun. She felt a kinship with the man akin to that of her father. It was a relief to know she wasn’t alone and Koon wouldn’t allow her to be alone with her condition. David Cabrillo was overjoyed to be trusted by his Captain. After so long alone and doubting his utility, Koon had casually brought the young man into the center of things. The pride Koon instilled in Cabrillo wasn’t producing arrogance as a byproduct but a deep-seated desire to perform at the peak of his skills for his Captain and by extension the rest of the crew. At an instinctive level, Peyter understood all this. He knew he’d stepped outside his guise as an officer time and again in recent months, but he couldn’t put into words why he’d done so. He only knew it was bearing fruit. In a very real sense Pioneer was wrecked on a barren outcropping of rock completely unable to support the lives of his crew. Mutinies, chaos, and bloodshed were endemic to such circumstances and had overwhelmed Captains far better than Peyter Koon. The crew had every right to turn a baleful eye on the man who’d ordered them to take off after a distant goal by a rout that had all but killed the lot of them at a stroke. Instead they were looking to him for guidance, assurance, and purpose. He could supply all that almost without effort so long as they trusted him. There was a knock at the door disturbing Koon from his reverie. He got up to answer it. Eddie stood at the door looking refreshed and cheerful. “I’ve got a request, sir.” “Is it time for the harvest mission?” Koon asked. “Give it another week before we move on that, Captain,” Eddie said. “We need the antimatter, but I’d rather have a solid timetable before I risk having so much of it around.” “You forget it might be hard to come by even at the Great Barrier,” Koon pointed out. “Harvesting the stuff might be more time consuming than building the new warp core.” Eddie nodded. “Fair point, but transporting enough to take us to the Delta Quadrant would require heavy modifications to at least a dozen shuttles. I was under the impression we needed those for running around the system.” “We do,” Koon admitted, “but we need the antimatter worse. If the saucer section was operable, I’d send it along to get the whole batch and keep the shuttles around.” His expression froze as an idea dawned on him. Eddie was oblivious. “I could get started,” he sighed. “It’ll take me two days to install the carriers. Forte and Okuma won’t like taking them out of rotation, but I can do each individually and keep as many active for as long as I can.” “How much antimatter do we need, Eddie?” Koon asked thoughtfully. “Thirty or fifty i-tons,” Eddie answered without hesitation. “Containing the stuff is harder than transporting it. It doesn’t take up much volume, but we have to keep it in elemental stasis until we need it. Large quantities have to be transported in several small containers.” “How much would we need to return to the Great Barrier and harvest the rest with the rebuilt ship?” Koon asked. “Could we simply run the ship on the old core to get back?” Eddie’s eyes narrowed in thought. “We can’t run the whole ship on the old core with the new power harness we’re building,” he explained. “Be like trying to light a fire with soggy kindling during a downpour.” “Can we use the antimatter from the old core to get us back to the Great Barrier?” Koon asked hoping the idea was solid. Eddie sighed again. “I had to vent most of it to keep the bloody thing from breaching,” he admitted. He calculated mentally what he needed and shook his head. “No,” he said decisively. “What we have I’m gonna’ need for fabricating parts for the refit and our supplies. What’s left after that could get us about a third of the way back to the Barrier, half-way at most.” “How much do we need for a trip back to the Barrier?” Koon asked again. “Six hundred i-kilos at high warp, maybe as little as fifty at an economical cruising speed,” Eddie said. “How many shuttles would that take?” Koon asked. Eddie blinked in surprise. “One,” he said sounding confused. “Shit, sir, that amount could be stashed in a desk drawer.” “Modify two shuttles for the harvest mission. That should be plenty to get the rest of the ship back to the Great Barrier,” Koon ordered. Eddie made a face. “Isn’t that a little risky, Captain? We know we have Hirogen looking for us back there after all.” “I know,” Koon said, “but the shuttles will be in more danger than us no matter how many we send.” He watched Eddie pace the corridor uncertainly. Gordon was many things but he was grossly conservative when it came to engineering. Returning to the Great Barrier wasn’t in doubt, it was precisely what the refit was designed for, but returning with only a fraction of the energy they needed offended his basic sensibilities. “It’d be risky,” he repeated. “The Hirogen could pick off both shuttles and we’d never know for months.” “That’s why I’ll send the best out there, Eddie,” Koon said. “If the best I have can’t sneak past the Hirogen, nobody can.” “But what if the way to the Barrier is blocked?” Eddie protested. “They could stir a bloody hornet’s nest out there and we’d be left stranded trying to find the shortest route to refuel.” “Let me worry about that, Commander,” Koon said. “How long will it take to modify the shuttles?” Gordon shrugged, “A few hours.” “Get started in the morning,” Koon ordered. To Be Continued |
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