SSSSS t TTTTTTTTTT kk SSSSSSS tt TTTTTTTTTT kk SS SSS tt TT kk SS SS ttttt aaaaa rr rr TT rr rr aaaaa kk kk sssss :: SSSS ttttt aaaaaaa rrrrr TT rrrrr aaaaaaa kk kk sssssss :: SSSSSS tt aa aa rrr TT rrr aa aa kk kk ss ss SSSSS tt aaaa rr TT rr aaaa kkkkk ssss SSS tt aaaaaa rr TT rr aaaaaa kkkkk sssss SS SS tt aaa aa rr TT rr aaa aa kkk kk ssss SSS SSS tt aa aa rr TT rr aa aa kk kk ss ss SSSSSSS tttt aaaaaaa rr TT rr aaaaaaa kk kk sssssss :: SSSSS ttt aaaa aa rr TT rr aaaa aa kk kk sssss :: MMM MMM ll t ii MMM MMM ll tt ii MMMM MMMM ll tt MMMM MMMM eee ll ttttt ii nn nnnn ggg gg MM M M MM eeeee ll ttttt ii nnnnnnnn ggggggg MM MM MM MM ee ee ll tt ii nnn nn ggg ggg MM MM MM MM eeeeeee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MM MM MM eeeeeee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MMM MM ee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MMM MM eee ee ll tt ii nn nn ggg ggg MM MMM MM eeeee ll tttt ii nn nn ggggggg MM M MM eee ll ttt ii nn nn ggg gg gg gg gggggggg gggggg PPPPPPP t PPPPPPPP tt PP PPP tt PP PP oooo ttttt PP PPP oooooo ttttt PPPPPPPP ooo ooo tt PPPPPPP oo oo tt PP oo oo tt PP oo oo tt PP ooo ooo tt PP oooooo tttt PP oooo ttt Star Traks: Melting Pot is based on Alan Decker's Star Traks, which in turn is based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, may he rest in peace. Copyright 2005. Star Traks: Melting Pot - The Movie "Brothers in Arms" by Paul Cloutier Through these fields of destruction Baptisms of fire I’ve watched all your suffering As the battles raged higher And though they did hurt me so bad In the fear and alarm You did not desert me My brothers in arms Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms Part 1 - Open Arms Captain's Log Stardate 58000.4 - After assisting the USS Aikido destroy the last of the Black Queens, we are responding to a distress signal, somewhere in deep space. At least B1 & B2 assure me that it is a distress signal. It is unlike any known language or transmission code that the Federation has ever encountered before. Since the strength of the signal is so strong, we expect to find a rather large ship producing it. Oddly, enough, the signal is coming from a thoroughly explored sector. The computer reports that the most recent survey of this area of space showed absolutely no deviation from any of the previously conducted surveys. The signal seems to be originating just outside of an uninhabited solar system called Doneth, located well away from normal spacelanes. "Anything on the scanners, yet, Lieutenant?" Seetamyn asked of his new Security Chief, Gisech. The Graaken had only been on board for a couple of weeks, but he had handled himself well during the battle with the final Black Queen. In fact, the USS Aikido, which had been assigned to Project "Open Arms" for the express purpose of tracking down the evil beasts, was even now limping back toward Earth for repair of damage suffered during that battle. The Menagerie had suffered considerably less damage, so she and her new companion ship, the freshly salvaged USS Utricularia, had been tasked with the job of providing aide to whatever vessel had broadcast the distress signal. The Utricularia was a Saber class escort vessel. While 'Escort' was her official designation, modern escorts in Starfleet were outfitted much more like destroyers than traditional escorts. However, extreme pacifism during the mid 2300's had caused the phasing out of the 'Destroyer' designation and so, Starfleet ended up with what were the most heavily armed escorts in history. Ustrano was working on a way to dock the Utricularia to the hull of the Menagerie as a sort of Captain's Yacht. Admiral Sontak had begun the arduous task of transferring the Utricularia to Project "Open Arms" permanently. Just like that, Project "Open Arms" had doubled its number of official ships! "Sir, I am detecting nothing on any visual spectral bands and metallic detection algorithms are showing negatives across the board. 'It is both necessary to say and think that being is: for to be is possible, and nothingness is not possible.'" "That will do, Gisech," Banjo, said sharply. The Changeling was still trying to get used to his new position as First Officer, and having his replacement spout off some silly philosophical quote all the time wasn't helping, much. "Wait, we have something!" came the sudden announcement from the Science Console. The Bynars had been working extra hard to vindicate their initial assertion that the signal that the ship was trying to trace was a distress call. "We picked it up with the occlusion software filters. Its small, roughly human-sized." "Dil..." "Already on it, Sir!" Mantron skillfully angled the ship in on the new data coming from the Science Console as the Bynars put the image up on the main viewscreen. At first, there apparently wasn't anything to see. Then a twinkling star disappeared. Then, another. M'Dral switched on the outside searchlights and trained them on the approaching object. Suddenly, the object that they were searching for jumped into view. Not only was it human-sized, it was human-shaped, too! In fact, it appeared to be a spacesuited person! Activating his commbadge, Banjo quickly made contact with Lieutenant Hirthnole, "Lieutenant, there is somebody outside the ship. Tractor them into Shuttlebay One. I will send down a trauma team." Banjo terminated the conversation in order to contact the Menagerie's Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Pish Jantoo. After he had quickly explained the situation to her, she gathered a team and headed down to the shuttlebay. Banjo and Gisech jumped up from their seats on the Bridge and hurried down to the shuttlebay, themselves. Anyone who could produce a distress signal that strong without any visible external equipment was a potential danger. As Banjo and Gisech entered Shuttlebay One, they found Doctor Pish and her team standing, frozen in amazement, watching their 'patient'. The 'patient' was standing by himself, seemingly completely unfazed by his sojourn in deep space. As everyone stood, staring at the newcomer, he tapped some sort of control on his left wrist, causing the transparent dome which was covering his head to seemingly melt away, revealing the man beneath. It was obvious that this was no human. In fact, he (assuming it was a he) looked like no Alpha Quadrant species that anyone present had ever even heard of. He stood nearly exactly two meters tall and his general build was completely average for a humanoid. His skin, however, was jet black. Not the warm, browns of some humanoids, but the cold black of interstellar space. His two eyes were bright red and seemed to glow from within. He had no nose, and his mouth was a simple, thin, nearly lipless slit midway between his eyes and his chin. His head was completely hairless. No ears adorned his head, either. The newcomer looked at his rescuers, quizzically before uttering a string of absolutely meaningless gibberish. Jantoo tried to encourage him to speak further, knowing that it would take the universal translator some time to learn enough about his language to provide even a rudimentary translation matrix. Recognizing the problem, the newcomer quickly looked around the shuttlebay, his eyes coming to rest on a computer console. Apparently, making a decision, the stranger walked quickly over to the console. "What should we do?" Jantoo asked Banjo. "I don't see any apparent weapons. Let's just see how this plays out. You and your team should probably return to Sickbay, however." Nodding quickly, the diminutive Bajoran gathered her team and headed back out of the shuttlebay. By now, the newcomer had reached the shuttlebay computer console. Examining it for a few moments, he withdrew a piece of what looked like rock, out of a pocket in his spacesuit and placed it on the console. Immediately data started scrolling across the console, faster than Banjo's eyes could even follow. Nothing bad, seemed to be happening, however, so Banjo allowed it to continue. He was still watching when his commbadge beeeeped, "Commander, what is your status?" came the calm voice of Captain Seetamyn. "Sir, the spaceman seems to be fully conscious and in good shape. He is currently accessing our computer files." "Why is he doing that?" Sir, I have no idea. We have not been able to establish communications. yet. However, his actions do not appear to be hostile." "Very well, Commander. I trust your judgement. Keep me informed. Seetamyn, out." As quickly as it had started, the scrolling information suddenly disappeared from the console. The newcomer picked up his rock and returned it to its pocket. He then turned towards Commander Banjo and started walking. As he neared the Changeling, he stuck out his hand (a hand, Banjo couldn't help but notice, that had three fingers and a thumb). When he was about one meter from the First Officer, he said, "Com-man-der Ban-jo, I as-soom?" "Yes, I am Commander Banjo. First Officer of the USS Menagerie. I would like to welcome you to..." "Thank, yahoo, Com-man-der, butt I must in-ter-upt. Yahoo ur all in grate dan-ger!" Captain's Log; Stardate 58000.8 - B1 & B2's assessment of the unknown communication has proven to be accurate. We have rescued a lone humanoid from deep space. His command of Federation Standard is, currently, rather rudimentary, but he seems to be learning it with amazing celerity. Since he seems to be determined to learn our language, and will speak in nothing else, our universal translator is unable to create a translation matrix to and from his language. He has declared that we are all in great danger, so I have called for a meeting to discuss his fears. In other news, M'Dral has detected an anomaly in this system. All previous Starfleet and Federation surveys of this system reported that there were no higher lifeforms present on any of the planets around Doneth. Our recent scans, recorded automatically during our search to locate the source of the distress call, indicate that there are in excess of 2 billion sentient creatures living on Doneth Two! I have ordered the ship to take up a standard orbit around the planet so that we might investigate this phenomenon. The Briefing Room held the Menagerie's senior officers and her guest, comfortably. Seetamyn had long ago instituted the inclusion of all of his senior staff in his meetings mostly because he believed that the greatest strength that the Menagerie possessed was her vast range of points of view. No other ship had such a diverse crew complement. Present for this "First Contact" meeting were; Captain Seetamyn, the ship's much-cyborged Vulcan captain Commander Banjo, her Changeling First Officer Commander Ustrano, the giant, slug-like Velvattian Chief Engineer Doctor Pish Jantoo, the ship's Bajoran CMO Lieutenant Commanders B1 & B2, the Bynar Science Officers Lieutenant Gisech, the new Graaken Security Chief, Lieutenant M'Dral, the Benzite Chief of Operations Lieutenant Mantron, the Menagerie's super-lucky Betazoid Helmsman Ensign Zamtra, the allegory spouting Tamarian Transporter Chief Lieutenant Hirthnole, the Tellarite who was in charge of Shuttlebay Operations and Ship's Services Linnea, the ship's Orion Hostess and manager of The Pirate's Cove. The object of their attention, at this moment, was the new alien they had just picked up. He stood at the front of the Briefing Room, watching as the crew came into the meeting. After Hirthnole rolled in, Seetamyn stood and began the meeting, "I have called this meeting so that we can all meet our new passenger. He hasn't told us his name yet, only insisted that we are all in great danger and asked to address us. To that end, I now turn this briefing over to him," Seetamyn gestured towards the jet-black man at the front of the room. "I a-pol-o-gize for not in-tro-duc-ing mi-self. Yahoo may call me 'Tellat'. I come from a dif-fer-ent di-men-shun. I must warn yahoo of a grate danger!" "Yes, you have said that, can you please be a little more specific about what the danger is?" Banjo asked. "I have come cha-sing an ee-vil race call-ed the Cattreth. They have come to this di-men-shun to con-kor you and your pee-o-ple. I have ree-son to think that they would have jump-ed in to your gal-ax-ee near here." "We have not detected any ships within many parsecs of this location," B1 & B2 sang back. "They wood have land-ed on the nearest suit-i-ble world," Tellat explained. The senior staff looked around at each other. They had a planet which had just had an unheard of population explosion and then they had someone telling them that a alien menace had crossed dimensional barriers and made its way here, and would likely have landed on a planet. The odds that these two items were just a coincidence must have been astronomical. "Tell us more..." Seetamyn prompted. Seetamyn, Banjo, Gisech, B1 & B2, M'Dral and Mantron had returned to the Bridge, along with their new arrival, Tellat. Training the long range scanners on the one large concentration of population on Doneth Two, M'Dral brought up a picture of a huge domed structure with thousands of cone-shaped beings moving around it. "Is this your 'danger'?" Banjo turned to Tellat to ask, but found him not next to the Captain's chair as expected. Hearing a cry, Banjo whirled and found Gisech sprawled across the floor. Tellat's hands moved across the Security Console, somehow targeting quantum torpedoes on the settlement, below. With a snarl, the Changeling flowed out of his chair and enveloped Tellat within his own body. Tellat wasn't to be deterred quite that easily, however. He clapped his hands together and dug his fingers into the goo that was Banjo's body. Straining, the new visitor forced his clasped hands out of Banjo's body and spread them, wide, creating an opening that he could wiggle free from. Banjo collapsed with a scream as his liquid flesh was ripped apart. Tellat dropped to the floor and rolled back to the Security Console where he was stunned by Mantron, with a phaser pulled from under the Helm Console. "Seetamyn to Sickbay. Medical emergency on the Bridge," the Captain calmly announced, after tapping his commbadge. Mantron and M'Dral quickly retrieved a set of security binders from a locker and restrained their unconscious guest. "I'd have to take that as a 'yes'," Mantron guessed, answering the question that Banjo had voiced before the altercation. Jantoo and several medtechs arrived on the Bridge. Quickly surveying the situation, she sent a pair to examine Gisech while she and the remaining tech knelt down by Banjo. He, however, seemed to be fine. Puddles of his gelatinous flesh that had been cast free of his body by Tellat were already flowing back into him and he smiled reassuringly to Jantoo to show that he was OK. She turned to Gisech and the techs already at work on him showed the tricorder reading that they had already taken, showing the Graaken to have a mild concussion. Tellat had acted to disable, not to kill. The medtechs quickly assembled an antigrav stretcher to move Gisech to Sickbay as Banjo shakily regained his feet. Seetamyn had summoned a security team. They arrived just as the medtechs were getting Gisech onto the stretcher. Banjo ordered them to take Tellat to a holding cell, but Seetamyn belayed the order, "No, take him to Guest Quarters. Maintain an around the clock security presence outside the room and allow Level One computer access, only." "Yes, Sir!" the team agreed and moved off with their prisoner/guest. "Why not the brig?" Banjo asked, annoyed. "He informed us of a dangerous threat. As soon as he saw that viewscreen, he acted to eliminate those new aliens. I must assume, from the available evidence, that those aliens are the threat that he indicated. Our question now is whether or not to believe him and, if so, what do we do about it?" "We can't really answer those questions, can we?" "No, Commander. That's why we are heading for Earth as fast as we can." "Understood, Sir," Banjo acknowledged, regaining his composure. "Commander, launch a few probes to monitor Doneth Two. In case this does turn out to be the threat that Mr. Tellat seems to think it is, a little intelligence data would not be out of line." "Agreed, Sir," Banjo replied as he went to his old Security Console to launch the probes, not to mention disarming those torpedoes! Seetamyn, Banjo and Ustrano made their way to the guest quarters where Tellat had been sequestered. The three had come to Tellat's assigned quarters to try to get some explanation from the reticent alien. He had been kept there, incommunicado, for the past several days as the Menagerie sped through space, back towards Earth. Banjo and Gisech had both completely recovered from their injuries and Gisech had returned to active duty after being cleared by Doctor Pish. The Graaken physiology seemed to recover from trauma amazingly quickly. Of course, Banjo had never been taken off of active duty, his gelatinous form was even more resilient than Gisech's. Seetamyn tweaked the door chime and its distinctive 'squa-eeek' was soon followed by their guest's "Enter." The three entered the room to find their jet-black guest sitting at the computer console. When he saw who it was that had come to visit him, he quickly rose to his feet and approached the group with his right hand extended, "Captain. Commanders. Please accept my most sincere apologies for my attempted abrogation of your authority. Such was certainly never my intention. I must confess to having been overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. How is your Security Chief?" "Lieutenant Gisech is fully recovered and back on duty," Seetamyn replied. "I am gratified to hear that, as I am to see you up and around, Commander," Tellat said, turning to Banjo. "That was quite a technique," Banjo acknowledged. "You'll have to tell me about how it was developed, some time." "I am at your disposal, Commander," Tellat graciously agreed. "Now, please tell me what is being done about the Cattreth." "We are currently heading back to Starfleet Headquarters at high warp. We will arrive on Friday afternoon when a special meeting of Starfleet's highest ranking officers will hear your story. Then, on Monday, a meeting of the Federation Council will debate what to do about these Cattreth of yours. I must tell you, however, that it is very unlikely that the Council will order the extermination of an entire species, based on only your say so." "Then I am very sorry to tell you that your Federation will not survive," Tellat said with real grief in his voice. "While we are traveling, may I have more access to your computer files? I would prefer to go into these meeting knowing as much about your bureaucracy as I can." "Will you give me your word that you will not try to take over the ship or move in any way against my crew?" "Captain, I am a stranger in your universe. I will abide by your rules and put my faith in this Federation Council, of yours. You have my word that I will not make any moves against this ship or her crew. In fact, I promise to not even leave this room until we reach your Headquarters." "Very well then, Commander Banjo, release access restriction on the computer console in this room. Tellat, if there is anything you require, do not hesitate to contact myself or one of my officers." The trio of officers left the guest quarters and split up. Seetamyn and Banjo heading for the Bridge while Ustrano made its way back to Main Engineering. In the turbolift, on their way to the Bridge, Seetamyn turned to Banjo, "Make sure a log is kept of all files that Tellat views." "Already done, Sir." Captain's Log Stardate 58025.1 - we have arrived at Earth to deliver Tellat to Admiral Sontak and the other Starfleet admirals and commodores who will decide if his story is serious enough to call for a special session of the Federation Council. I will be beaming down to speak with Admiral Sontak, momentarily, and Tellat will follow, soon after. I am confident that the wisdom of the Council will prevail. Seetamyn rematerialized in Sontak's private office. Starfleet was trying to keep the existence of Tellat and the Cattreth under wraps for the time being. Even Mrs. Rosenthal had been sent home a little early this evening. Sontak turned to Seetamyn as though the captain had been standing there for hours and spoke, "What do you think about all of this?" "Sir, I believe that this man believes what he is saying. He truly thinks that these Cattreth will destroy the Federation if we do not act." "Very well. Since you have had the longest contact with him, I wanted your opinion before the meeting. Have him sent down, now." Seetamyn spoke into his commbadge and, moments later, Tellat arrived with the customary flurry of sparkles. His face was twisted into a rictus of distaste and horror. "Do not worry about it. Transporters are completely safe," Seetamyn tried to reassure the man. "'Completely safe!'," he exclaimed. "Try telling that to the trillions who died during the Null Genesis Wars!" Seeing the blank look on Seetamyn's face, Tellat seemed to pull himself together, "I'm sorry, yet again, Captain. I forget that this universe hasn't been fighting the Cattreth for the past several centuries. Let's get to this meeting, shall we?" Sontak and Seetamyn exchanged a quick nod as Sontak and Tellat made their way to the Command Conference Center. Seetamyn sparkled away. The Conference Center was filled with nearly fifty admirals, commodores and a few captains. It was possible that these few men would decide the fate of the Federation over the next few hours. After a brief introduction by Admiral Sontak, Tellat took the podium and began to speak. Over the next three hours, his voice, filled with conviction, passion, horror and dogged determination, rolled on. Never wavering or faltering, he tried to hammer the magnitude of the threat that the Cattreth represented into the listening officers. Slowly, his message penetrated the minds of the assembled men. Many of them visibly blanched as the true shape of what they were facing formed before them. When Tellat finished, the Starfleeters were visibly shaken. They murmured among themselves for several minutes until seeming to reach a consensus. Commodore Vasquez stood, "I think I speak for all of us when I say that we can only hope that you were exaggerating the threat, at least a little. Unfortunately, you don't seem to be the type to engage in hyperbole for the sake of getting your audience's attention. Therefore we must assume that this threat IS real and prepare accordingly. We will inform the Federation Council that a Special Session is required for Monday morning. Over the weekend, prepare what you have just told us as a presentation for the Council. We have made arrangements for you to stay at The Home Port, one of the better hotels here, in San Francisco. Admiral Sontak will be your contact man, please coordinate with him if you have any special requirements. We will see you again on Monday when we present this to the Council. Hopefully, they will recognize the threat and act to move immediately. As for the time being, we will start moving some ships into position, but in all honesty, there are very few assets in place. Frankly, a ship from here would reach Doneth more quickly than anything we have in deep space. But these are matters of logistics and deployment, nothing that you need to concern yourself with, so ,please start work on your presentation for the Council." Sontak stood to escort Tellat to his hotel. Making sure the alien was comfortably set up in his room, the Admiral made his way back to his office. The Menagerie was only one ship and would, most likely, not be selected by the others as a major piece to be used in the coming battle. Sontak had a much higher opinion of her personnel, however. He decided to send them to where they might be of some use - the Omega Configuration! Part 2 - Tellat It seems strange to me that my centuries-long battle will end here, in this strange universe, but, if I have learned anything over the long, lonely years, it is simply this - we cannot always choose our lives. Sometimes we are but pawns of larger forces. My name is Tellat C'lrith. I am the only one of my kind in this entire universe. I am alone in this strange, new dimension - my only friend and ally is a rock. Of course, that rock has been my constant companion for over 400 years, so at least that hasn't changed. Here, I am facing the culmination of all I have strived for, lo these many decades. In order to accomplish my goal, I have been asked to organize my thoughts into this presentation. There is a battle coming. It is a battle that I am unlikely to survive. However, my survival is not what is important. The total annihilation of my enemy is all that matters. If I can ensure that they are completely destroyed, I can die a happy man. My story begins some 600 years ago. I lived, with my wife and two children, in a suburban neighborhood. Our neighbors were pleasant, hardworking people, as were the majority of the people on our planet, Paxtria. I commuted to our local government center each day where I worked as a systems programmer. My life was exceptionally ordinary. I'm sure historians from my world would try to paint a picture of absolute bliss and perfection about my life, but the simple fact is that my life had its highs and its lows, in absolutely normal proportions. My life could best be describes as "average." This is until the day of destruction. The day of death. The day everything changed. I was at work that day - nothing unusual about that. We first heard about the coming of the Cattreth on a special news bulletin during lunch. Of course we didn't know that it was the Cattreth at that time. The report just mentioned that there had been some interference and loss of contact with many of the planet's communications satellites. We didn't think much of it and the news service didn't really seem particularly concerned either. That changed two hours later when the bombs started falling. At this point in our history, my planet was made up of eight major power blocs. Each one struggling to find some sort of edge to allow it to reign supreme over the other seven. We had long ago fought devastating, world- encompassing wars which had threatened to exterminate all life on our planet. The last seven decades had brought, while not peace, exactly, at least a cessation of outright warfare. Instead, each of our power blocs' espionage agencies fenced and played off against each other in a technological one-upmanship duel. No one bloc ever managed to achieve any real, lasting advantage and we enjoyed the fruits of increased available funding for social programs. In the last seventy years we had managed to end poverty, hunger and most diseases. Every child on the planet attended school for 15 years, regardless of their family's wealth. We had reduced our workweek requirements through automation so that twenty hour workweeks were the norm, now. We, mistakenly, believed ourselves to be safe and secure. Those illusions were shattered, along with all of our major cities, during the first two hours of the Cattreth's initial attack. Perhaps our fragmentation into the power blocs diluted our response to the attack. Perhaps, against so overwhelming an opponent, we could never have launched an effective response. It is a moot point. We lost over 75% of our population that day. Included in that count were my wife and children. After the initial bombing run, the invaders pulled back, apparently to see what our response would be. I drove home in a daze, only to find the burned out shell where my house had once stood. The wreck of my wife's vehicle parked out in front, told me what would later be confirmed by DNA analysis of the ashes - that my family was no more. The next several days passed without my being aware of them. My next memory was of standing in front of the rubble of my house, again, (or was it the same time?) By this time the Cattreth had established a full presence on the planet. Any resistance had been ruthlessly eliminated and the Cattreth were in the process of converting the planet and its people to serve them. They had started schools to train their new slaves in Cattreth language and customs. As I stood there, in front of my shattered dreams, I had two thoughts. The first was that no matter what it took, if there was any possible way to do so, that I would rid the galaxy of the Cattreth menace for all time. The second thought was that in order to do so, I would have to use their own technology against them. The next day, I enrolled in the closest Cattreth school. I was a model student. My background in Paxtrian programming, made me especially valuable to our conquerors, and I made my knowledge readily available to them. Students were housed on the school grounds, since the general population looked unfavorably upon our activities. Resistance cells soon formed, hoping to throw off the yoke of Cattreth tyranny. Didn't the fools realize that Paxtrian weaponry and technology was simply no match for our interstellar invaders? I understood that only too well. Our planet had been decimated by four Cattreth Colony Ships. There were hundreds of these ships spreading out through the galaxy from the Cattreth homeworld, even now. They traveled in groups of four and, when they found a suitable planet, they pummelled the population into submission. Once the planet was suitably pacified, the Colony Ships would land and the true horror began. You see, nearly three hundred years before, Cattreth scientists had made two amazing discoveries. Cattreth were horrible-looking monsters. Their bodies were shaped like truncated cones. They stood over two meters tall and had no separate heads. Their faces were merely stuck on their bodies. The bottom of their bodies sprouted six stumpy legs and four ropey tentacles sprang from the top of their bodies as well. The creatures were warm-blooded, but they laid eggs. These eggs were soft, like a jelly-filled pillow. Normally, these eggs took over a year to hatch, after being laid by one of the hermaphroditic Cattreth. Another 12 years would pass before these Cattreth hatchlings would mature into adults. The first discovery those Cattreth scientists had made, three centuries before, was something they called "ForceGro." ForceGro was a method of producing full-grown, fully trained, adult Cattreth in only four months! This is what made the Cattreth so dangerous. Once the Colony Ships had landed on a planet, the ForceGro chambers would begin to operate. A healthy adult Cattreth could produce three eggs per month. An invasion task force of only 100,000 Cattreth could produce an adult population of millions in only a year. In two years, they would completely outnumber any indigenous population and the Colony Ships would lift off to search for another world to conquer. In the three hundred years that the Cattreth had been using this technique, only seven planets had managed to repel the initial Colony Ships. The Cattreth had developed a response to this, as well. They simply sent in a battle fleet and obliterated the offensive planet. Of the seven who had repulsed the Colony Ships, only one had managed to defeat the battlefleet. So the Cattreth had developed a technique for dealing with that, too. On their way into a system, a battlefleet would deploy specialized mines throughout that planet's star system. These mines wouldn't cause any harm to any ships which left the covered system, unless they emerged, en masse. Instead, they reported on ship movements so that any emerging ship could be destroyed by the Garrison Ship which would be left to tend the minefield. If the mines detected a large enough number of ships moving through the field they would detonate and destroy the ships. Then the Garrison Ship would deploy more mines. The one planet that this had been done to, approximately 80 years before, had never managed to get even a single ship past the Garrison Ship. The more I learned about the Cattreth, the more hopeless our plight appeared. Oh yes, I mentioned two scientific advances, didn't I? The other one was what made the Colony Ships and the race's imperialistic tendencies necessary. They discovered immortality. Now, in my travels across my galaxy, I have discovered many fecund races. I have even come across a couple that were immortal. But never have I encountered any race which was both - except the Cattreth. Of course, not all of the Cattreth are immortal. Only select members of the race were deemed suitable for such an honor. They have a process that they creatively call 'Immortus'. This process converts a normal Cattreth into an immortal one. Usually, each colony planet is ruled by a council of immortals. By serving the Cattreth Empire well, whether through scientific, military or some other discipline, a Cattreth might be found to be worthy of such a gift. Normally, about one hundred new immortals were created, each year. I was on the edge of despair. There seemed no way to overcome our immortal, implacable foe. But, in my deepest despair, I remembered holding my children. I remembered my wife's lips against mine and my resolve stiffened. My initial idea to use the Cattreth's technology against them was my only hope. About that time, I got my first glimmer of hope. It was just an off-hand comment from one of my instructors at the Cattreth school. You see, Cattreth Colony Ships rarely engaged in combat, themselves. Instead, along with their ForceGro equipment, each carried several smaller ships. These ships could be outfitted with planet bombs, defensive weaponry or surveillance systems, depending on the situation. They were generally just used as shuttles between the orbiting Colony Ships and the surface of the conquered planet. The comment I heard, the one which gave me the beginnings of the plan which would eventually save Paxtria, was that these utility craft were equipped with emergency LS pulse-drives. Now, most Cattreth ships used a 'was-is-will be' drive system. It is a ridiculous name for a truly wondrous engine. Somehow (transdimensional physics isn't really my forte) the drive simply takes the ship from point 'X' and puts it at point 'Y' - without ever moving it through the space in-between! This allows the ships to move vast distances nearly instantaneously. There an upper limit on how far a ship can jump, somewhere around 1000 light years, but the only limiting factor in how far a ship can travel in a day is how fast the astronavigation officer can calculate the new jump-points. It is not uncommon for a ship to travel 5,000 light years a day. There were only two drawbacks to this method of propulsion. The first was that the re-emergence into normal space created a lot of sensor 'noise'. With the right equipment, it was possible to track the movements of ships and prepare a suitable welcome for them at their destination. Of course, if you used 'was-is-will be' drives to prepare that welcome, the approaching fleet would be aware of your movements, too. The second problem was that, because of the difficulties caused by large gravimetric disturbances nearby when materializing or dematerializing, you couldn't jump into or out of a planetary system. For intra-system travel, ships used a combination of chemical propulsion and LS pulse-drives. The combination could produce speeds of up to what you would call Warp 6. A pulse-drive, alone could take a ship to approximately 95% of the speed of light. It did so very quickly, using a combination of magnetic 'sliding' and atomic power. The shuttle ships had a variant of these drives installed. Their emergency LS pulse-drives could punch a ship to 80% of light speed, nearly instantaneously, but it would only work for ten seconds. They were designed to allow a ship to get out of a dangerous situation very quickly. They required that the ship's pilot input an emergency escape course before they could be used. Usually a pilot would input a generic course headed out of a planetary system, before starting on a mission. This was common knowledge to Cattreth students, one of the first lessons we had been taught was how impressive the Cattreth technology was. This had been designed to further cow us into submission, and, with the exception of myself, it had worked. No, the comment that make me perk up my 'ears', as the human saying goes, the one that gave me the first glimmer of hope was - "our emergency drives are so sophisticated that they will even function in an atmosphere." Now, the majority of the Cattreth spent each night aboard their Colony Ships, leaving only a token guard force on the planet, below. It had been demonstrated very clearly that attacks on this guard force would be answered with a severe response. Each morning teachers, administrators, soldiers and construction supervisors would be shuttled down to the planet. The shuttles would stay, under guard, on the ground during the day so that, in case of a riot or any other dangerous threat, the Cattreth could be whisked to safety. Each Colony Ship used four shuttles for personnel transport, each day, leaving two others aboard the ship to be used in the case of an emergency. Before the arrival of the Cattreth, Paxtria had had a global network of computers and related equipment which allowed people across the globe to communicate with each other. There had been some debate as to whether this ease of communication had helped maintain the peace or whether it had threatened it, but all such debate had been rendered moot by the Cattreth. Our conquerors had allowed this network to continue, even repairing the damage done to it during the bombings. It made sense, really, they would need such a system after they had landed the Colony Ships, so why not make use of what was already available? Thankfully, this pragmatism would be their downfall. What none of my neighbors, friends or coworkers had ever suspected was that I was a spy for one of the other blocs. I had passed information along about management techniques, programming advances and various other minutiae by using this network. I knew that at least one of my old contacts was still alive, and that he was a member of one of the resistance cells. I carefully encoded my plan and initiated my old masked-transfer protocols as I logged on to check an online encyclopedia reference for my Cattreth masters. Pleased by my willingness to share the sum of my peoples' knowledge with them, they praised me for my intelligence in siding with the winners. I could only hope that what they were saying would prove to be true. I logged off, and braced myself for the nervewracking wait which was to come. Fortunately, at least for my nerves, the wait was not a long one. Three days later, four protests broke out - one near one of the shuttles from each Colony Ship. These mini-riots were carefully designed to be large and noisy enough to provoke the shuttles' guards into a confrontation, while being small enough to not be considered a major threat. While the guards' attention was on the rioters, brave, two-man teams snuck onto the shuttles. While one man spray-painted anti- Cattreth slogans and did some minor vandalism, the second man swapped the normal, return route programming with the emergency escape course. This required only a few keystrokes on the master control board in the shuttle's cockpit. The next step required just a little more programming at that console - setting up an automatic emergency LS pulse activation routine when the shuttle attained an altitude of fifty meters. Then a few squirts of paint over the console to disguise what had been done. Each suicide team spent less than five minutes in their target shuttle and all were slaughtered for daring to soil Cattreth equipment with their touch. The guards, realizing that they had been duped into allowing the Paxtrian vermin to actually get on board their shuttles, opened fire on the crowds. In all, sixty-five brave Paxtrians paid the ultimate price for their part in the plan. I can only hope that, if there is some sort of afterlife, somewhere, they realize that their sacrifices were not in vain. For freedom was, indeed, ours that day. Later, when the Cattreth boarded their shuttles to sleep that night in security, the programming, which had been purchased at such a high price, activated and the shuttles slammed into their Colony Ships at over 75% of the speed of light. Relatively speaking, the shuttles didn't weigh much at all, but it doesn't take very much mass, traveling at such a high speed, to do tremendous damage. The Colony Ships were completely destroyed. Their crashing to the ground killed thousands more Paxtrians, but there was nothing that could be done to prevent this carnage. Of the other twelve shuttles which had been on the surface that day, 7 had already docked and were also destroyed. Four were too close to the exploding Colony Ships and were also destroyed. The remaining one landed safely, back on Paxtria. The Cattreth on board must not have realized what, exactly, was happening, because they emerged from their shuttle and started ordering around the Paxtrians who had come out to meet them. These Paxtrians were no longer interested in Cattreth orders and all the guards were ripped to pieces. Fortunately, there were some cooler heads in that mob and the Cattreth engineers and teachers were spared. We would need their knowledge if we hoped to remain free for very long. When the Colony Ships went down, we discovered that the Cattreth had not, in fact, destroyed our satellite communications. Apparently the Colony Ships had been transmitting interference to block communications. Again, pragmatism on their part worked to our advantage. With the global computer network again in shambles from the damage caused by the crashing Colony Ships, the satellite systems served to unite the Paxtrian people. My old contact announced that it was my plan which had brought the invaders low and, as soon as I was discovered, parades and banquets were held in my honor. For my part, I spent most of my time with a particular Cattreth engineer. He had decided to cooperate with us rather than be tortured and we discussed the design and construction of Cattreth battleships. For I, as well as he, knew what was coming. He helped me in exchange for what he required to make the time that he had left as pleasant as possible. We both knew that, once communication with the Colony Ships was lost, it would be no more than two years until a Cattreth battle fleet would show up. He believed that they would turn this planet into a burning cinder. I had hopes that we might be able to construct a fleet of our own and fend off the Cattreth. While he and I worked on plans for such a fleet, the rest of Paxtria tried to get back to their 'normal' lives. A new world committee was formed with two delegates from each of the former eight power blocs. This committee, called the Hexan, would unite the Paxtrian people in a single purpose - defense against the return of the invaders. They would also doom our people. I don't think it was their fault, really. It was just that people were so used to things being a particular way, that they couldn't understand that the entire situation was different from anything they had encountered before. The politicians behaved like politicians, but what else could you expect? It was, if anyone is truly to blame, the fault of the people for selecting politicians, in the first place. What the planet needed was true statesmen, but we hadn't seen such a beast in so long that people had forgotten what one was. I went before the Hexan with my plans for a two-man space fighter. The ship was slow, clumsy, under-powered and ugly. I had named it the 'Mosquito'. I look back at that design now and cringe that I could ever have imagined such a pathetic vessel. It DID have one saving grace, however. It COULD, if we could just make enough of them, defeat the Cattreth battle fleet. I had done all the calculations, we had, just barely, enough production capability remaining to produce about sixty of these ugly ships. Cattreth battle fleets usually consisted of four or five heavy cruisers and about twice that number of medium support craft. This didn't count the Garrison Ship, which would stay outside the target system in order to maintain and monitor the minefield. I had calculated that ten of our new ships would be needed to take down each Cattreth heavy cruiser, which were the real threat, and the remaining ten could take on the support craft. It was a desperate gamble, but it was all we had. I presented the plans to the Hexan in a globally televised ceremony. The 'Hero of Paxtria' presenting the world's last, best hope for survival. Pretty, little girls handed me bouquets of flowers and there was much hand-shaking and back-slapping. Then, once the television cameras were turned off, the Hexan decided that the plans had to be reviewed by a committee. By sheerest coincidence, this new committee was made up of friends and relatives of the members of the Hexan. The committee examined the plans for two weeks before realizing that some of the technical specifications were written in Cattreth. This wasn't particularly surprising, since the Paxtrian language had no words for some of the mathematical and engineering concepts involved with the engines and weaponry of the ships. No one on the committee could read Cattreth, so 'experts' had to be brought in to translate the words. Then more experts were brought in to explain the translations. After three months, the committee was still examining the plans and I could see it all falling apart. I pulled what strings I could - as the "Hero of Paxtria' the television people listened when I called a news conference - and denounced the Hexan as a bunch of bureaucratic fools. The government responded that I, as a civilian, just didn't understand how things worked in government. I responded that it appeared to me that NOTHING worked in government and stormed out of the news conference, sure that the planet was doomed. At that point, I pretty much cut off all contact with the rest of the planet. I made my way to one of Paxtria's beaches and was given a house to stay in, right near the water. I spent the days trying to put the thoughts of the end of the world out of my mind - not an easy thing to do, I assure you! The nights I spent just staring out, over the water, dreaming of what might have been. That's where Dert T'lthal found me. He said he represented a consortium of businessmen. They had decided that the destruction of the planet might be bad for business and had pooled their resources to help avert this financial disaster. Dert tried to convince me to join them. I asked what the point was. At this time, we had about sixteen months left before the Cattreth fleet arrived. He explained, that, between them, the consortium represented about 35% of the entire manufacturing potential of the planet. My initial calculations for the Mosquito had been based on using 20-25% of the manufacturing ability of the planet. Dert had just offered me the first real hope I had had in months. Dert had arranged transport for the two of us back to the consortium's base of operations. When we arrived, we were immediately whisked to an immense underground installation. I had known that several of the old power blocs had had underground facilities, but I had no idea that anything like this had survived the Cattreth attack. Dert escorted me to a catwalk, high above the main manufacturing floor. The floor was over eight acres in size. Gathered on this floor were thousands of technicians, mechanics, clerks, machinists, scientists and others. When Dert and I reached a platform on the catwalk, he ushered me to the front. When the crowd saw me, they burst into a massive cheer. Here, before me, was hope personified. We set to work. Somehow, those four words don't seem to convey the massive undertaking that started that day. First, we had to make machines that would, in turn, make other machines. Whole systems had to be designed and machining techniques developed to support them. It took us ten months to get everything ready. Ten months gone, and not a single Mosquito had yet been built. This wasn't unexpected, however. The development of the necessary infrastructure had taken 30 MILLION man-hours. Now the real work could begin. We built trainer-simulators to teach the pilots and gunners how to fly the ships. We trained our mechanics in the tiniest details of the Mosquito's construction. I taught basic Cattreth tactics and explained the weaknesses in their heavy cruiser design. About the time our first Mosquito was completed, the Hexan announced the final approval of their revised plans. They had cut out almost all of the ship's armor and turned it into a one-man fighter. They had taken off four of the ship's six beam-cannons. The engine had been made more fuel efficient at the cost of what little speed the ship had ever had. We all watched the televised unveiling in that hidden facility. When the new designs were unveiled, one of the squad captains turned to me and said "Sure glad I picked /this/ team!" Everyone laughed and we saw that we might have a chance. That squad captain invited me to have dinner with her, and I, thinking that maybe things were turning around, readily agreed. Over the next several months, Teesha and I would become very close. I had expected that I would be a squad captain, or at least a pilot. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that that wasn't to be the case. I was, apparently, too valuable to risk on such things. I tried to get Teesha to make Dert and his consortium to listen to me, but she just looked at me as if I had grown an extra head. "We can't lose you," she said. "You're Paxtria's only hope." "No, I argued, "you pilots are her only hope, and if you fail, it is all over, anyway." "You goof," she shot back. "Of course we're going to win! We need you for what comes afterwards!" I was, and to this day still am, shocked by these peoples' confidence in me. My battle plan called for squads of twelve ships, two more in each squad than my minimum estimate needed to destroy a heavy cruiser, to act as a unit. Constant drilling in the simulators and, eventually, the actual Mosquitoes, had forged are young pilots into a coldly effective fighting force. As the two-year mark approached we had managed to produce 72 Mosquitoes. The government had surprised me and actually managed to build 16 of their revised designs. As the last days in the two-year deadline counted past, Teesha and I made love, taking comfort in each other. I finally allowed myself the possibility that happiness and hope could be mine, again. The last thing that I had managed to get done before leaving the Hexan, was to get four surveillance satellites launched. The designs were based on Cattreth probes. We knew what general direction to expect the Cattreth battle fleet to approach from, since we knew what direction the core worlds of the Cattreth Empire were in. Exactly fourteen days more than two years after our the destruction of the Cattreth Colony Ships, our satellites' long-range sensors detected a 'was-is-will be' jump, approximately 8 light years away. They would reach Paxtria in hours. The government fighters launched from the newly commission Paxtria Memorial spaceport, on their way to valiantly defend Paxtria. Our secret fleet was already in space. I thought that we would move our ships out in support of the poor Hexan ships, but Dert had other ideas. He planned to win more than one battle, this day. And he would. To this day I do not know if I should thank him, or curse him. Dert ordered our ships to hold position approximately halfway between Paxtria and the outer edge of our star system. The Hexan fighters had been re-christened D'lbert class, in honor of the highest ranking member of the Hexan, and they sped towards the outer edge of our system. They reached their destination just about the same time as the Cattreth fleet. Five heavy cruisers and eight smaller support craft. The Cattreth ships dwarfed our D'lbert fighters (which was one of the reasons that I had named the ships 'Mosquitoes'), but I have to give their pilots credit. They ploughed right into the midst of the enemy. The Hexan had tasked several surveillance satellites to provide video feeds of the 'Great Paxtrian Victory.' However, it became obvious to even the most optimistic viewer after several minutes that what they were seeing could be more accurately described as the 'Great Paxtrian Rout.' Eleven of the sixteen ships were vaporized without ever firing a shot. The remaining five tried to regroup, but their training had, apparently been as shoddy as the construction of their ships, and three were destroyed by colliding with each other. The two remaining ships, for reasons that I still can't imagine, turned and fled back towards Paxtria. Did they imagine that the Cattreth would leave anything living behind them when they were finished? D'lbert, highest ranking politician of the Hexan then went on camera. His face was gray and he voice sounded as if he spoke from deep in a grave. He spoke of the sorrow he felt on this day. He spoke of the spirit of the Paxtrian people. He spoke of giving our enemies a good fight, at least. I never found out how he did it, but at that point Dert somehow sent out a broadcast signal that interrupted D'lbert's speech. He spoke of how one man had warned of trusting the ineffectual government. He spoke of how one man had saved Paxtria before. He said that when Paxtria truly needed him, her hero would once again save the planet. But, he said, this time there would be a price. Last time, the hero had been rewarded by the people by being restricted by a government who didn't understand the true nature of the enemy. Last time the hero had been thwarted in his holy task of saving the Paxtrians. But, he said, the hero was forgiving. The hero held no grudges. The hero was willing to save the people again! At this point, I am told, the population rose up and shouted my name, begging me to 'Please save them!'. Dert, was a master showman, master businessman and a true statesman. Very well, Dert allowed. The hero will save us all once again. But this time, when it is all over, the hero must be allowed to lead us! He must be given the opportunity to make us all safe! He must be given permission to act without government interference! At this point, I had a pretty good idea of what he was up to. If I could have found out where he was broadcasting from, I would have killed him on the spot! Having whipped the populous into a frenzy of me-worship, Dert, who must have had some satellites of his own, switched to a view of space. The space showing our true Mosquitoes. As one coordinated unit, the 72 ships shot off to save Paxtria. I'm told the cheers this time actually shattered glass in many buildings. The two fleets closed on each other and a new battle was joined. This time, the Cattreth faced more than their match as hit, after hit, was scored against their ships. Two heavies exploded in flames as Mosquito squads rained fire down on the rest of the fleet. What had seemed like seconds turned out to have been nearly two hours of combat. The Cattreth fleet was gone - we had lost 22 Mosquitoes. We would survive! Then the surveillance sensors picked up a massive, close-range jump, and seconds later the video showed a Cattreth Superbattleship. It was impossible! Our Cattreth teachers had informed us that there were no more than four SBS class ships in the entire Cattreth fleet! But here was one, now. All of the joy on my lips turned to ashes in my mouth. My Mosquitoes were about twenty meters long. The heavies had each been over 300. The SBS was nearly a kilometer! How could we fight such a monster? I had been sequestered in a shielded bunker, in case any of the Cattreth ships had broken through our defenses. I had tried to explain that a bunker would be about as much good as wax paper at that point, but no one had paid any attention. Now, the comm console in front of me lit up. Teesha's face appeared. I tried to smile, though I'm sure I failed miserably. "I'm sorry," I said. "You all fought brilliantly, but because I failed to consider this possibility, we are all going to die." "We all die anyway," she said, her face showing sadness, but, also, resolve. "And you didn't fail. I love you." And she signed off. I didn't understand what she was planning. And, by the trillions who have died in my cause, I can't say for sure if I would have stopped her if I did know. The next thing I knew, she had formed up her squad and sent instructions to the remaining Mosquitoes. Then, she and her squad, punched their engines to full speed and they rammed the SBS! Now the Mosquito design had called for engines capable of one half light speed. During production, we had seen a way to boost that to over 60%. The drives wouldn't function in an atmosphere - there was no need for that. The twelve Mosquitioes hit the SBS simultaneously in a massive fireball. The SBS listed, slightly and then straightened. She had been damaged, but was by no means out of the fight. Then, in their original squad formations, the remaining Mosquitoes followed Teesha and her squad into oblivion. It cost us every ship we had, and more importantly, every pilot, but we defeated the Cattreth that day. And on that day, I understood a deeper truth. As long as the Cattreth lived, I would never know peace. Never know happiness. Never truly rest. I would rid the galaxy of this menace - and NOTHING else mattered. The sacrifices of my people demanded nothing less of me. Dert and I emerged from our hidden bunkers and he set about reorganizing the world government. The Hexan was disbanded and Dert's consortium took over leadership for Paxtria. I was given control over all military and defensive operations while the businessmen took over the management of the planet. Although I was sceptical about such an arrangement, at first, the businessmen soon proved to be more than sufficient for the task. Several members of the former Hexan were even brought on board and it seemed like in no time at all, much of the damage done to our fair planet had been healed. I busied myself designing three new ship classes for the defense of Paxtria and for the eventual counter-attack we wished to mount against the Cattreth. One year after the space battle which had granted our planet a temporary security, grand festivals and celebrations were held. The anniversary was declared 'The Day of Freedom' and, in a lavish ceremony, I was officially proclaimed 'Ruler for Life' and I unveiled my new designs to thunderous applause. The Mosquitos had always been an uneasy compromise between speed of construction and usability. My new designs were entirely performance based. The Wasp was to be our main small battleship. A four-man mini-cruiser, it had decent shields and armor and outrageous offensive capabilities. It had no extra-system flight capabilities, however. It didn't need any. The second design, the Hive, was designed to get those Wasps into battle. Each Hive was designed to carry 100 Wasps, including pilots, armaments, repair facilities and fuel storage. The Hives had very workable 'was-is-will be' drives, and modest pulse engines. Their shields and armor were better than any Cattreth ship short of a Super Battleship, but they didn't have a beam weapon hot enough to light a candle. The last design, the Dragonfly, was designed for exploration, as well as for battle. We knew we would need to find allies for this battle. We hoped to find worlds not yet conquered by the Cattreth and mount a counter-offensive. These ships would be our long-range scouts. Although they were adequately armed and armored, they relied more on their speed in battle. Their pulse drives were as advanced as we could make them. With the new designs ready, the world government, which by now was being called the 'Directorate', invited me to attempt to unravel some of the other mysteries the Cattreth had left behind. More specifically, they wanted me to help the lab-boys decipher the mystery of Immortus. I patently refused. Publicly, in full, televised, view of the entire planet, I forbade research into Immortus and, instead, ordered our research facilities to channel their efforts into finding a propulsive system which could bypass the Cattreth minefield which trapped us. They all wanted to argue the point. They all wanted the Immortus more, but Dert's public proclamation, one year ago, of my authority, had made my word law. Or so I thought. The next twenty-five years passed in a blink of an eye. We had produced three Hives and over 400 Wasps. We had twelve Dragonflies ready to go. Public debate had run high over whether or not we should take out the Garrison Ship and the minefield. It was a certainty that two, full Hives would trigger an attack by the Garrison Ship, and that the Hives and their deadly cargo would be victorious in such a conflict. The uncertainty was what would happen, afterwards? While I was confident in our fleet's ability to destroy up to two Super Battleships and twenty or more heavy cruisers, I couldn't know what the Cattreth would send. Twenty-five years had given them as much of a chance to build ships as they had given us - and they had a much greater production capacity than we had. They also had, presumably, experience in space combat, experience that we sorely lacked. My decision to hold tight, sparked the first public disagreement with any decision that I had made. I was glad to see that twenty-five years of peace and cooperation had not turned Paxtria into a planet of sheep. The public outcry was stilled, nearly overnight, when one of our research labs suddenly exploded. We had, over the past two and a half decades, discovered what you call warp and subspace physics. While being interesting diversions, they weren't particularly better than the Cattreth pulse drives and didn't prevent detection by the minefield. There had been some brief hope that this new technology, coupled with the previously abandoned study of what you would call Cloaking, might be the solution, but the mine- field proved to be capable of coping with this combination, too. The director of the lab that had blown up that day had, apparently, postulated that there must be something between normal space and subspace. At least that seemed to be what his surviving notes indicated. We were lucky to get that much information. Had we not put in place a nightly archival of each research facility's daily progress in a central location, we would never even have gotten that. Suddenly there was renewed activity and hope. The bickering over our lack of aggression was forgotten. Six months later, we successfully tested our first null-space drive ship. It turned out that there WAS a 'layer' of space between normal space and subspace. It seemed that normal physics didn't apply in this layer. Speeds in excess of 1000 LY/hour could be achieved and detection by sensors in normal space was impossible. We sent the test ship out of the system, right in front of the Garrison Ship, and it never noticed a thing. In one fell swoop, we had realized the dream that had evaded us for the last quarter century. We could push into space faster than the Cattreth - and we could do it UNDETECTED! A massive refit of all Hives and Dragonflies with the new drive systems was started. It was during this time that Dert betrayed me. Oh, I'm sure he did it with the best of intentions. He was the best man I'd ever met. What he saw in me, I'll never know. I was, by this time, a little past middle age. I had thirty, perhaps forty, years left before I went to join Teesha, my wife and my children in whatever lie beyond death's door. It was during my annual physical that I found out that Dert had been working behind my back, researching Immortus. I found out how successful he had been, too. I woke up a body I had not worn in thirty-five years, that of a twenty-five year old! Dert and his co-conspirators had, apparently fully cracked the Immortus problem. One of the perks of the Cattreth procedure was that you could select any age to 'lock-in' as your permanent profile. They had un-aged me to little more than a child! Dert came into my recovery room, his eyes bright and the smile on his face threatening to remove the top of his head. That is, until he saw me, anyway. You see, I had always had an ulterior motive for banning research into Immortus. Without it, I would have soon been dead, free of the terrible burden of my pledge to rid the universe of the scourge that was the Cattreth. Now, even this escape was denied to me. Dert read all this in my eyes as he came into my room. An incredible sadness seemed to overcome him as he shook his head, "You still don't understand, my friend, do you?" he asked, so very, very softly. "I understand that you have doomed me!" I snarled back at him with all the venom I could summon into my voice. "Why do you think Teesha died? Why do you think everyone has worked so hard these last twenty-five years?" he prodded. "They did it for Paxtria," I replied, confused. "No, Tellat," he answered, shaking his head. "People talk about serving an idea or a dream or their planet, but, when it all comes down to it, what they really mean is that they will work for a MAN. They did it all for YOU! They see what I see when I look at you - the assurance that, someday, their children's, children's children will be able to live in a galaxy free of the threat of the Cattreth. They see you carrying the fight, no matter where it takes you, no matter what it costs you. They see you winning!" I was in tears by this time. "Then you all are fools!" I sobbed. "I'm not the man for this job. I can't do it." "Oh, but you can," he said, sitting next to me. "You see, you are the only one who can. Therefore you must!" The intensity in his words made me look up. I saw in his eyes a fanatical devotion that bordered on hysteria. I then realized what had happened. After the devastation brought by the Cattreth, I was the only one who had shown any sort of consistent plan. The success of that plan had served to focus the hopes and dreams of the entire populace on me. I had become, at least to them, some sort of heroic figure, some sort of savior. Had the situation not been so grim, I might have laughed. As it was, there must have been some sort of lingering insanity left in me, too. Instead of laughing at Dert's fanaticism, I decided that I would shoulder this burden, not only for those who had died, but, more importantly, for those who had lived, as well. Dert sensed the change in me and stood, smiling. "Now you understand," he said. "Yes," I replied, tireder than I had ever felt, before. For I understood even better than he did what was ahead. This was not a war that would be won in years or even in decades. This war would consume centuries. Dert explained how they had finally solved the Immortus puzzle and revealed that it had proven so difficult to do that we would not have further resources to give any one else the treatment for many years. Now I was truly separate from my people. Dert understood me, perhaps, better than I did, myself. Somehow he had known that I would put myself in one of the Dragonfly scouts. Armed with this knowledge, he had had a special ship constructed for me. The Dragonfly One was the most heavily armed ship in the entire Paxtrian Fleet. Her armor was twice that of a Hive and her engines were state of the art. She was, in short, the ultimate explorer ship. (I found out, later, that he had simply told the production engineers at the shipyard that I would be piloting the ship and they had made all the modifications, themselves.) The refits of the new null space drives had taken nearly a year, and it was decided that the annual Day of Freedom celebration would double up as the launch for the new Explorer fleet. I had mapped out flight plans for nine of our Dragonflies. Two were to fly to the one system that had held off the Cattreth, now over 100 years ago. The remaining seven would each take a different course, dispersing out to cover as much of space as possible. The production schedules had been re-tooled to produce four Dragonflies for each full Hive and further exploration flights would lift off, regularly. The normal crew complement for a Dragonfly was eight. The modifications made to Dragonfly One meant she could be handled by a single pilot. The day of our launch dawned clear and bright, the sixty-five of us who would crew those first ships stood proud in the morning sun as we were seen off by thousands in person and, literally, the entire rest of the planet, on television. Of those sixty-five, I am the only one still alive. The null space drive was truly a marvelous invention. While you traveled, in complete safety in an area of space that really wasn't space, you could see where you were going by means of a transparent portal that looked back into normal space. This portal allowed you to see out, but didn't allow anyone in normal space to see in. This meant that a ship using the drive could actually see where it was going, and dispense with the blind transition jumps associated with the 'was-is-will be' drives. The fact that it was quicker was a nice perk, too. Finally, one could, if one was careful, use the drive while in a planetary system, since gravimetric disturbances were limited to normal space and didn't affect the null drive. The nine Dragonflies zipped out of the Paxtrian system without the Cattreth Garrison Ship being any the wiser. Two of them at least knew that there had been in the past, populated planets in their direction. The rest of us sped off, blindly, into the unending night of space. With the computer systems we had at that time, traveling at speeds in excess of 500 LY/hour meant that we couldn't fully scan the surrounding space for planets. This was contrary to our purpose which was to find other, non-Cattreth controlled planets to aide in the, as yet undeclared, war. We, therefore, traveled at about 350 LY/hour so that we could get meaningful scan data. Communications inside of null space were pretty much instantaneous, so massive communications arrays had been constructed in orbit of Paxtria, in null space with hardwired terminals in normal space. The Dragonflies sent continual datastreams back to Paxtria with navigational information as well as any Cattreth ship sightings. I had never been off-planet before, and the vastness of space was nearly overwhelming. The mind reaches a point where the numbers associated with distance simply stop registering. We traveled in short bursts of speed, coming out of null space when our sensors detected the presence of star systems. Sometimes we found barren, lifeless planets - gas giants or super-dense balls which weren't suitable for life, at least not life as we knew it. Other times we found Cattreth controlled planets. Information on these worlds was immediately transferred back to Paxtria so that an idea of the scope of the modern Cattreth Empire could be determined. Dragonflies Two and Three, the ones tasked with finding that bastion of resistance, that we had known about since the invasion, found the last few survivors of that planet still grimly holding on - though just barely. They had been fighting against the Cattreth for over a century, reusing debris from previous battles to build new ships, but they were completely out of resources. Desperate for allies, I ordered a Hive to assist the defenders. I was hailed as a hero by both my people and by the rescued Hovonans. How could I tell them that my motives had been purely selfish? The Cattreth already knew about the existence of Hovona. They had been fighting there for quite some time. The more I could focus the Cattreth's attention there, the longer Paxtria could survive. Nevertheless, celebrations were held for weeks in my honor as a new Galactic Council was formed, including the members of Paxtria's Directorate and the leaders of Hovona. I was, of course, named 'Galactic Leader for Life'. The Hovonans had become, by necessity, masters of making something out of virtually nothing. There are substantiated reports that some of their engineers actually wept at the waste displayed by our construction methods. Refits, using Hovonan techniques were immediately instituted, which resulted in enough raw materials to triple the size of our fleet. With, finally, sufficient resources to work with, the Hovonans soon had recreated all of our ships. They were now better armored and more fuel efficient. They had, at the same time, built a fleet for themselves. Now that they had the chance to go on the offensive, they pushed themselves harder than ever before. One innovation that they introduced actually gave us a decided advantage at this point in the Cattreth War. With their miniaturization techniques, they managed to shrink the LS pulse-drives down to a 12 centimeter cube. This was quite an improvement over our six meter cubes, and allowed us to start production on something that we had had on the drawing board for some time but had never had the ability to construct. These were the FTL Torps and they would allow us to turn the tide against the Cattreth, at least for a while. A FTL Torp was, basically, a torpedo with an anti-matter payload propelled at its target at 90% of the speed of light. The damage created was quite substantial. By utilizing what your scientists call 'The Unruh Effect', the explosive force was converted almost entirely to heat upon impact. Temperatures of well over one million degrees, centigrade, have been recorded when using these torpedoes. And, I must say, they certainly came as a surprise to the Cattreth when we first used them! After my refit on Hovona, I resumed my search for inhabited, Cattreth-free planets to invite to join us. My search was quickly rewarded. Detecting a star system from null space, I brought Dragonfly One into normal space to find a system under siege. At the outer edge of the system, a Garrison ship was busily laying its mine field while a battle fleet pounded the system's fourth planet. I immediately targeted the Garrison ship with two of the new FTL Torps and watched in satisfaction as it was, basically, vaporized in the dual explosion. Sending out a quick status comm, I headed into the system to engage the Cattreth fleet. The inhabitants of the planet were certainly putting up one hell of a fight. Although they appeared to have no space fleet, they appeared to be shooting at the Cattreth ships with huge planetary guns. Some of the guns appeared to be shooting some kind of ionized plasma which overloaded the Cattreth shields. These shots were followed up with high-explosive concussive charges which slammed into the now unprotected hulls. Unfortunately, these did little damage and the Cattreth shields didn't stay down for long in any case. I flew into the midst of the battle and launched an FTL Torp at a heavy cruiser on either side of me. Both exploded satisfactorily. The last of the heavy ships turned to come at me head on, but I slipped into null space before its weapons could find me and then slipped back out behind it and sent it to oblivion along with its companions. The mop up of the support craft took a bit of time, but since none of these smaller craft had "was-is-will be" drives, I knew that they weren't going anywhere. As I was finishing up, a Hive and several more Dragonflies slipped into normal space. We were contacted by the planet's head administrator, an impressive woman named Mast, and invited down to join in the celebrations. At the celebrations Mast asked about joining us and I readily agreed that we would welcome her and her people. Then she floored me by insisting that she and I be married. She said it was customary for two factions to show unity on her planet with the marriage of its highest ranking members of opposite sexes. I said that this wasn't a Paxtrian tradition and flat-out refused (diplomacy another area I was somewhat lacking in). She immediately called off the celebrations and demanded that we leave their system. Dert was quickly ferried to the planet (whose name was Chandras, by the way) to try and smooth things over. Dert and Mast were sequestered in her audience chambers for several hours, but when they emerged, we had an alliance. The celebration was back on and plans were quickly put into place to add seats to the Galactic Council for Chandrasian representatives. When I went to see Mast and to thank her for this change of heart, I saw something in her eyes that hadn't been there before - pity. So, Dert had told her all of our history. I would come to recognize this look in nearly all of our allies at one time or another. Not that I needed their pity. I would use them, their planets, their resources and their skills ruthlessly in the pursuit of my one goal - the eradication of the Cattreth! For the next twenty years, we were on the offensive, reclaiming system after system from the Cattreth. As our resources became more plentiful, more and more people were given the Immortus treatment. Among the first were Dert and Mast. Soon after they gained immortality, they were married, in a galactically-wide broadcast ceremony. As we expanded, we encountered and befriended numerous alien races - the plant-men of Termus Seven; the toad-people of Wispa; the Darksiders, to name but a few, but none were, perhaps, so unique or so important as the Double S's. Of course, they didn't call themselves the Double S's, their names were, to most carbon based lifeforms, unpronounceable. You see, the Double S's were our first encounter with silicon-based lifeforms. In fact, "Double S" stands for "Sentient Silicon". We discovered them on a barren, desert world. We had found no 'normal' lifesigns but our scans had detected massive amounts of silicon. Since we utilized this element in our ship construction, we decided to land and determine the suitability of the planet as a mining colony. I was not among the explorers who first landed on what we thought was an empty world, so I can only imagine their surprise when the rocks started singing! Once an appropriate translation matrix was developed, it was discovered that many of what we had initially thought were plain old rocks, were actually incredibly old, completely immobile lifeforms. Almost self-contained sentient computers, these rocks, now dubbed "Double S's" by a poetic, young researcher, begged us to take them to the stars. In return, they promised to replace our comparatively bulky computers and operate our ships. We agreed and soon all of the ships of the fleet, had been refit with sentient Double S's as our computer systems. For most ships, the aeons-long experience of the Double S's were their greatest benefit, but for me the installation of the Double S in Dragonfly One meant that I now had the one thing that had been denied to me for decades - companionship. You see, for whatever reason there might have been, a telepathic bond developed between me and my new companion. We were to eventually discover that a high proportion of Immortals who spent a great deal of time in close proximity to Double S's would generally create such a bond. I had continually refused the assignment of other crew members to the Dragonfly One. In order to make the kinds of tough decisions that I knew that I would be forced to make, I wanted isolation from others who might influence my mind away from raw pragmatism and back towards compassion or mercy. There was no room in my psyche for these concepts, anymore. D-One (as my new companion preferred to be called) and I were to spend the next 400 years together. I think he saved my sanity and I'm sure he is responsible for the continued existence of compassion in my soul, no matter deeply it is buried. I mentioned that we fought back the Cattreth for several decades, and so we did. This was, I am convinced, not because of any particular brilliance or luck on our part but because the Cattreth had developed a system that had worked for them for many centuries. They were, therefore, understandably reluctant to change. This cultural inertia allowed us our initial successes, but when they changed tactics they nearly overwhelmed us, overnight. They had, apparently, been working in secret to increase the range of their "was-is-will be" drives and had successfully increased the jump range to 2500 LYs. At the same time, improvements to their astronavigation computers allowed them to jump much quicker than before - up to three times in a single hour! Perhaps worse of all, these new drives didn't create the distinctive jump signature that had allowed tracking of the earlier drives. These improvements, although substantial, were little more than incremental improvements to their current technology. The devastating new weapon that they unveiled was much more revolutionary in scale. You have commented on my distaste for your transporters. Let me now assure you that I had very valid reasons for my hatred of this technology. You see, we had never developed what you call 'transporters'. A side development of the null space research had given us the ability to 'slide' across real space through null space from one place to another. Our component molecules were never disassembled and shot to a new location for re-assembly. We had no idea that such a thing was even possible! So the new weapon that the Cattreth started hitting us with was unimaginably crippling. At first we didn't even know that something was wrong. There was merely silence from one of our newest allies. We sent a squad of Dragonflies out to investigate and they brought back horrifying news: the planet had been completely overrun by Cattreth! The ships that we had left there for defense were blasted wrecks. Even worse, further analysis showed that the ships had been destroyed by our own weapons! We didn't know what had happened, there had been no distress calls from the planet, or from the ships. Out top scientists were completely baffled as to how such an attack could have been carried out. Unfortunately, this wasn't to be an isolated event. Over the next two months, we lost 12 planets, all in the same way. Finally, we dispersed over 200 Dragonflies out amongst our Alliance, in secret, with orders that they were to remain in null space, indefinitely. They would monitor each planet and report back what technique the Cattreth were using. The answer was, fortunately, not long in coming. Unfortunately, it was worse than we had thought. Along with their work on drive technology the Cattreth had made significant advances in Cloaking and had discovered what you call transporters. Worse, they had coupled this new technology with the replicator technology which we had both had all along. The Cattreth had built huge, spherical ships filled with personal weapons and body armor and tanks of some sort of protoplasmic goo. These ships were then equipped with the new, improved "was-is-will be" drives and Cloaks and snuck into orbit over their targets. Using a "super-warrior template" the goo was replicated into soulless, pre-programmed killing drones, equipped with weapons and armor and beamed down to the planet and onto the defensive ships. We got a sense of just how massive a threat these new tactics were when one of our surveillance Dragonflies disobeyed orders and managed to take down one of the sphere-ships. With only the energy dispersal pattern of the transporter beams to give them any sort of idea as to the location of the ship, that crew managed to destroy one of the new threats. The planet was lost, by the time enough targeting data had been gathered, something over 20 million Cattreth warrior drones had been beamed to the planet, more than enough to establish a beachhead while they used their ForceGro technology to produce actual warriors to completely overrun the planet. We did manage to evacuate over half of the population before the planet finally fell, but such a victory proved hollow in light of what we faced. You see, the sphere-ships were over five kilometers in diameter! Even assuming that machinery and equipment took up three quarters of that volume, that still left 16 BILLION cubic meters of space available for the protoplasm. At two meters per drone that meant that, given enough time, each sphere-ship could deliver more than 8 BILLION drones to the surface of any planet! This sizable force was easily enough to take any colony world and several ships could combine to ground assault larger worlds. If the drones could establish a beachhead, with their fecundity and ForceGro tech, that 8 Billion could become over 150 Billion in only five months! The Cattreth would overwhelm the galaxy by simply outbreeding every other race /combined/! So far the Cattreth had been sending the sphere-ships out, un-escorted, but that could change at any time. Unless we were willing, not to mention able, to protect our outer worlds with a significant defensive force, the Cattreth would be able to plunder any world they chose. Even worse, they would have the personnel to jump out from these newly conquered worlds with ease. And, in fact, this is what they did. Wave after wave of ships were fought back by our defenses, but still more came. All it took was one sphere-ship getting into position and we would lose that world. True we could bombard the planet from orbit, but that created as much damage for us as it did for them. In fact, it was worse for us, because we had to expend resources fighting just to slow them down, with no real hope of defeating them once they were entrenched on a planet. There was only one solution and even I was loath to employ it - we would have to write off any planet captured and make that world useless to everyone. I believe you call such a strategy a 'scorched earth policy'. How apt is that name! You see, we had found that the vast majority of planets in our galaxy had nickel-iron cores. Over the millennia of their existence via volcanic action and radioactive decay, these worlds had at least traces of iron throughout their cores, mantles and surfaces. We had come across, quite by accident, a method of completely transforming iron into energy. We had first hoped to be able to utilize this as a method of propulsion but had eventually decided that it was far too dangerous. A single drop of the catalyst somehow entering a planet's atmosphere would completely transform the planet into a raging inferno! The atomic transmutive energies released literally consumed everything on the planet. Once initiated, the process would only stop once every atom of iron on the planet had been consumed - and this could easily take decades. Even after the process had stopped, the planet would remain unlivable for fifty years or more as the fires slowly burnt themselves out. In many cases, the intensity of the fires was such that the very atmosphere would become ignited, rendering the planet uninhabitable forevermore. This was the solution that I, and I alone, decided on to stop the advance of the Cattreth. Once the decision had been made I could see that most of the military had also believed that this was our only hope, but that most of them had been too horrified at the implications to ever suggest such a course of action. We loaded a special squad of Dragonflies with the Trans-Ferroniun Bombs and sent them out to the Cattreth-occupied worlds. There, uncounted trillions died. In many cases we had never been able to completely evacuate our own people and so their ashes mixed with those of the invaders. We decimated our former worlds and pulled back behind a defensive screen that was too solid for the Cattreth to penetrate while our Dragonflies of Death worked ever closer to the core worlds of the Cattreth Empire. This situation persisted for nearly 150 years. The galaxy wept at the funeral pyre we had made of her and even the cleansing fires couldn't expunge the stain of horror from my soul. These dark times became known as the Null-Genesis Wars. So, perhaps, you can see why I find your transporter technology so repugnant? Eventually, we developed what we called Gravity Bombs and proceeded back out from behind our defenses, seeding space with the G-Bombs as we went. You see, G-Bombs would target /mass/ so Cloaking was no defense. We had been busy as the galaxy was being cleansed, and although we assumed that the Cattreth had also been busy, we felt confident that this time we would prevail. I'm not sure why, perhaps the galaxy looked into my heart and decided that the loss of the Cattreth would be a small price to pay to stop the carnage that had been dominant for centuries, or perhaps the Cattreth themselves just lost their taste for conquest, but, for whatever reason, we were successful. Over the next 100 years, we pushed the Cattreth further and further back towards their original homeworld. We reached the point where they were actually abandoning planets rather than allowing them to be Trans-Ferrionium Bombed. Bright joy slowly began to replace the awful gray of despair throughout the Alliance. The Cattreth retreat began to turn into an out and out rout. Ship after ship was destroyed, many after offering barely token resistance. We foolishly believed that we had broken the spirit of the Cattreth. What fools we were. You see, we had destroyed literally hundreds of worlds in our mad scheme to 'protect' the galaxy and the Cattreth had no desire to rule over such a wasteland. They had begun working on a way to breach the very fabric of reality, itself. They had decided to let us have our devastated little galaxy and to find greener pastures to plunder. We began to piece together this information from bits and pieces of intelligence gathered from what was left of the Cattreth Empire. Low ranking Colony Administrators led the Cattreth in mass suicides as they poisoned their fields. The remaining immortal Cattreth had all gathered on the race's original homeworld to await the construction of a ship capable of crossing the dimensional barriers and allowing them free reign in another universe. The battles that our fleet were currently fighting were delaying tactics only. The Cattreth threw absolutely everything they had at us to buy just enough time for them to start anew. When we finally did put all of the pieces together, emotions were split. Many felt that our job would be done and good riddance to them. Others felt that dumping the Cattreth on another universe was immoral. The debate raged back and forth until I was forced to take matters into my own hands, again. In an Alliance- wide broadcast I simply asked what was to keep the Cattreth from conquering another universe and then coming back to this one to finish what they had started? Within a week the entire fleet had mobilized outside of the Cattreth system. Its mission was to completely obliterate the enemy once and for all. It didn't quite work out that way. As we popped out of null space and back into normal space, we detected bizarre energy readings. Long-range sensors determined the cause - a huge hole had been ripped in the very fabric of space-time and a sphere-ship was moving through that hole. Without any conscious thought on my part, I sent the Dragonfly One speeding towards that hideous hole. It started collapsing just as I reached it, but I slid through! I ended up in this universe. None of the stars were familiar to me, but that was the least of my worries. According to D-One, the collapsing nature of the hole had had a strange effect on my ship. Dragonfly One was being crushed around me! Thinking quickly, I grabbed D-One from his slot on the main console and quickly ran to the slider alcove. Setting a destination to just outside the ship, I triggered the sliding sequence and stepped from the alcove... into deep space! Fortunately, I had been wearing a containment suit, since we had been about to engage in what we had hoped to be the final confrontation of our long war. I watched in morbid fascination as Dragonfly One slowly collapsed into itself, growing smaller and smaller until it winked out of existence altogether. Had it compressed to the point of non-existence or slipped back to my home universe? I hit me then. I was all alone in another universe. The Cattreth were still a threat and I was in the middle of nowhere. I triggered my distress beacon, more out of a perverse dedication to protocol than out of any real hope of rescue. The containment suit could provide me with food, water and oxygen indefinitely, but so what? Amazingly, I was picked up by the Menagerie, two days later. The rest of my story you already know. Part 3 - The Hunters Commander Justine Monserrat stood in the Administration Offices of McKinley Station, looking out the windows at her newly repaired ship. OK - technically it wasn't her ship. At best, it was Captain Thorne's ship, she was only the First Officer. But it surely felt like it was hers. Especially since she had just completed a walkthrough with the Engineering Team that had been repairing the damage that the Aikido had suffered during the final battle with the Black Queen. Monserrat had been gratified to see that even the crayon scribbles that Captain Thorne's evil son had left on nearly every wall had also been removed. She was still surprised that she had been the one to conduct the walkthrough, apparently repairs had, for some reason, been stepped up, and she had been the first Bridge Officer that had been found. She wondered if the accelerated repairs meant that the ship would be getting a new mission. As far as she knew, none of the crew had even heard any scuttlebutt concerning their new assignment. Probably the captain had their new orders and had just forgotten to tell them. Thorne was, currently, touring some old museum down on Earth with his son, what was the name of that place, again? Oh, yes - "Chuck E. Cheese's". Monserrat considered contacting him to find out what their new orders were. As she was moving her hand to tap her commbadge a blaring klaxon suddenly sounded. After that alarm followed an even more alarming voice broadcast, "All personnel assigned to the USS Aikido! All personnel assigned to the USS Aikido! Report to your duty stations immediately! Report to your duty stations immediately!" Monserrat hurried to the nearest computer console to request more information, but none was available. The console directed her to return to the ship, where answers would be forthcoming. Annoyed, Monserrat again tried the console only to find herself dematerialized and deposited, in a flurry of transporter effects, back on the Bridge of the Aikido. The ship's new Helmsman, Lieutenant Aceed Sperr was already at his post, as were Ensign Virgil Cordwainer, Lieutenant Ivor Matalon and Doctor Preston Stewart, the ship's Chiefs of Ops, Security and Sciences, respectively. Standing off to the side was a jet-black man, wearing civilian clothing, that Monserrat had never seen before, but she didn't have time to investigate his presence further, because, just as she was ordering a status check, another transporter whine interrupted and dropped Captain Thorne, his six-year-old son, Alex, and a hail of small, plastic balls all over the Bridge. As the 'bounce-ity-ping-pong-bop' of the raining balls died away, Alex began to cry, piteously. Thorne skidded his away over to the boy and helped him to his feet, revealing a small, green ball stuck in the boy's bottom. Thorne helped Alex waddle to the turbolift and Monserrat heard him request 'Sickbay', before she was overcome with giggles. <> she thought gleefully as she tried to regain control. When she did manage to regain her composure, she, again, asked for a status report, and was shocked when she got it; "We are traveling at our best speed towards the Doneth system," reported Lieutenant Sperr. "What!" responded the other four Bridge Officers. "Who ordered that?" demanded Monserrat. "As far as I can tell, the course was preprogrammed in to activate once all crew members were aboard," Ensign Cordwainer explained, after doing a quick systems check. "I believe that I can explain," the heretofore silent stranger offered. "And you are...?" demanded Monserrat, finally having the time and an excuse to study the stranger at length. His unusual coloration was his most noticeable characteristic. It was as though some ancient God had taken a double-handful of the very firmament, itself, and molded it into a humanoid shape before breathing Life into it. Monserrat somehow found herself feeling both comforted and uneasy as she stared into the unfathomable depths of the stranger's face. "Please forgive my seeming discourtesy," the stranger began, "my name is Tellat C'lrith. I have been appointed as a Special Advisor to this ship for this mission." "And what 'mission' is this?" Monserrat insisted. "Well, I have a presentation from the Federation Council which explains everything, I was planning on waiting until your Captain..." "Fine, fine," Monserrat raged. "We'll wait for Thorne to see this 'presentation' but can't you give us the short version so that we have some idea of what's happening?" "Very well," agreed Tellat. "Your universe has been invaded by the most dangerous species you will ever encounter. These beings have captured a Borg Cube and are making ready to begin a campaign of conquest and invasion. We have been given the task of stopping them. Any further questions?" The stunned silence that suddenly filled the Bridge was his only answer. Starfleet's Akira Class is a medium sized ship, larger than a Prometheus Class but quite a good deal smaller than a Galaxy Class. Its unusually heavy torpedo launcher configuration (Akiras carry 15 torpedo launchers, including two which can fire directly to port or starboard, a feature nearly unique in Starfleet designs), make it a perfect choice as a front line warship. It also makes it particularly useful as a defensive weapon, its battle configuration freeing up more general purpose ships from patrol and protect duties. The Aikido was no exception. She had originally been part of the Earth Defense Force. Although the 'EDs' were generally looked down upon by much of Starfleet (never experiencing that whole 'explore new worlds and new civilizations' thingie), they still served an important role. The Earth poet, John Milton, had once penned 'They also serve, who only stand and wait', and the 'EDs' had adopted this as their motto. The Aikido now found herself in something of a 'no man's land', however. For the past several months, they had become a new type of Starfleet division. They had become a division which actively sought out and destroyed threats from evil-minded alien invaders. They had managed, with a good bit of luck, to find and destroy the Black Queens. This success had, at least in Starfleet Command's vision, made them the perfect choice to track down and destroy the new alien threat - the Cattreth. This was becoming apparent to the Bridge Crew as they watched the Federation Council presentation that Tellat had brought with him on board from Earth. Access to records of Federation Council meetings were usually restricted to Ambassador Security Clearance, or higher, but this record had been cleared for the command and technical staffs of the Aikido. Not that the ship boasted any great scientific membership. Even a Prometheus Class ship carried more scientific personnel than the standard Akira Class. The Aikido carried an even smaller complement, since she had been stationed over Earth. What was there to explore over Earth? The ship's Captain, First Officer, Chief Helmsman, Ops Officer, Head of Security, Chief Engineer, Medical Doctor and Sciences Officer were gathered in the ship's largest briefing room (actually a Tactical Planning room), to view the record. The presentation had started off with Tellat's boring autobiography. Monserrat had had trouble keeping her eyes open. <> The presentation shifted its focus from Tellat's story to a brief debate by the Council representatives, before finally resolving into an image of a planet. The Council had switched over to a video feed from the observation probes that the Menagerie had left in orbit of Doneth Two. The probes could collect a variety of data, including population estimates. It seemed that one of the Council Representatives was arguing that all the Council had to do was to keep monitoring the population of the planet. If there were the sudden population explosion as described by Tellat, they could assume that the rest of his story was true and could then act accordingly. This suggestion seemed to be met with great enthusiasm, since it, basically, required the Council to do nothing. Like politicians throughout the ages, doing nothing was what they did best. Just then a shadow seemed to pass over the video screen which had been set up to display the telemetry from the probes. A proximity notification popped up and several of the probes directed their scanners outward to identify the newcomer. It was a Borg Cube! The Council meeting erupted in excitement - what was a Cube doing so deep in Federation space? Why was it there? Well at least the Cattreth situation was solved - the Borg would make short work of them! It was later decided that the Cube had probably homed in on Tellat's distress beacon. The Borg had likely been trying to add the equipment that had produced such a unique signal to their Collective. Things didn't work out that way. Telemetry from several probes winked out as the massive invader simply plowed through them, seemingly oblivious their presence. The remaining probes magnified the planet view, zooming in on the gigantic Cattreth dome-shaped city. Transporter flashes lit up the picture as thousands of Borg descended on the city intent on assimilating the populous. The drones were met by a wave of Cattreth, and vaporized before they could assimilate a single soul. Then, beams of some unknown energy shot out from the Cattreth city, striking the Borg Cube. The Council members and Starfleet Command guests fully expected the Cube to simply ignore the weapons and blast the city from space. Once again, their expectations were never met. Instead, wherever one of the beams touched the Borg Cube, electricity crackled and snaked its way across the hull of the ship. The ship shuddered and then the unthinkable happened - the Borg tried to flee! They didn't make it very far as beam after beam shot out from the planet, paralyzing the ship. Then, new beams shot out, capturing the stricken Cube and pulling it down to the surface of Doneth Two. In just over six minutes, the Cattreth had captured one of the Sector's deadliest enemies! The white faces of the Council spoke volumes as to how the spectacle on the monitors had affected them. On the Aikido, more white faces mirrored that chagrin. Tellat had once again become the center of attention in the Council Chambers. Questions bombarded him from all sides as the Council Members struggled to not panic in the face of what they had just witnessed. Tellat, a face of calm amidst this storm, spoke with quiet clarity. "You see? I have tried to warn you, but, perhaps, this has been warning, enough. Now we must act quickly or all will be lost. The Cattreth will be transforming that ship into new vessels for themselves. The Borg drones will be stripped of their implants and their biomass added to the Cattreth's supply of protoplasm. Once those new ships take off, they will seek out populated worlds and take them over. The Cattreth will make short work of the their ship construction - I estimate that they will be able to get spaceborne within a week! We must act at once!" Chaos reigned supreme in the Council Chambers at this latest bad news, until Admiral Sontak stood, an island of serenity amidst the pandemonium, "There is a ship, currently being worked on in McKinley Station which has, for the past several months, been engaged in tracking down and destroying the Black Queens. I recommend that we utilize this ship to go after these Cattreth." The Council Members and Starfleet Admirals grasped at this straw, and orders were immediately sent to the Station to speed up the Aikido's repair schedule. Tellat was quickly granted Special Observer status with plenipotentiary powers over all things relating to the destruction of the Cattreth. And there the record ended. The story it had told had cleared up many of the crew's questions, while raising still others. Tellat seemed to have anticipated this and made himself available to answer the inevitable questions. Only Monserrat was quiet throughout the Q&A session. She sat, alone, surrounded by a kind of raging silence that seemed to extend outward from her body like a wall of angry force. Finally, the wall of rage pushed out to the point where it became a palatable force, noticeable to the rest of the assemblage. Conversation died as all attention turned to the enraged First Officer. "These, these Cattreth! They took out a Borg Cube! How on Earth can Starfleet expect this one ship to defeat them?" she demanded, after eventually coming back to the 'here-and-now' and realizing that everyone's attention was focused on her. "The Borg came with the intention of assimilating and absorbing the Cattreth. We have no such intentions. Our mission is simply to destroy them, a mission which can be accomplished from long range with this ship's quantum torpedoes. We need never come within range of the Cattreth surface weapons." Tellat's pronouncement was met with stunned silence. Although the Aikido had, for the past several months, been tasked with hunting down and destroying the Black Queens and their mind-controlled Thralls, there had been less than two score targets, at most. Now Starfleet was asking them to destroy a helpless planet-side colony of millions. Tellat recognized the looks on the faces of the Aikido's crew. He had seen that look many times before, but most recently he had witnessed it on the faces of the Federation Council when he had described the danger that they were facing. It had taken the casual destruction of one of their most deadly enemies to convince the politicians that the threat was as real as he had reported. These officers had witnessed that same destruction but, since it was they who would be expected to be doing the actual extermination, their training and basic decency made them reluctant to embrace such a mission. Tellat only hoped that their discipline would be enough to take the required actions when called upon to do so. The briefing broke up with many dark mutterings and discomforted officers. The next several days, as the ship made her way to the Doneth System, would not be happy ones. First officer's Log; Stardate 58049.2 - We have reached the outer edges of the Doneth system and tied the surveillance drones' telemetry into our sensor array. Long-range surface scans verify that the Cattreth are feverishly at work on the fallen Cube. Tellat, Stewart and Matalon have been sequestered in Holodeck 3, running attack simulations to discover the optimal torpedo spread configuration to exterminate the Cattreth. Captain Thorne has been absent from the Bridge for most of this mission, along with his son, much to the relief of everyone else. Of course now that we are here and ready to begin, he's decided to make an appearance. I wouldn't mind so much if he hadn't given Alex my chair! The turbolift doors at the back of the Bridge 'whooshed' open as Ivor Matalon, Preston Stewart and the alien known as Tellat emerged. Stewart and Matalon took their customary positions at Sciences and Security as Tellat made his way to what was becoming his normal station - just to the side of the command seats, and outside the Captain's Ready Room. Without preamble the Paxtrian demanded, "How long has this been going on?" The 'this' that he referred to was the apparent cessation of all activity around the Cube on Doneth Two, which he indicated by extending his hand towards the main viewscreen which had been tied into the sensor feeds. Captain Thorne, never the shiniest apple in the basket, responded, "All what? There's nothing going on!" "That's what he means, Sir," Monserrat clarified. Turning to Tellat, she answered his question, "It only happened in the last few minutes. Well, maybe ten. Certainly no more than 15." She guiltily remembered that she had been sticking out her tongue at Alex for some time and her attention might have wandered, slightly. Tellat seemed ready to either curse or weep, but the Paxtrian pulled himself together, instead and ordered, "Begin bombing pass - immediately!" "Belay that! What's the hurry," Thorne wanted to know. "Captain Thorne, if you had been paying attention for the last week you would understand that the Cattreth would only stop work on that ship when the repairs are completed. If the ship is ready to fly, they will not hang around for a farewell party! We MUST take them out while they are still on the ground! Now, Lieutenant Matalon follow my orders!" "Now just a minute!" Thorne shouted, "this is MY ship. I give the orders around here!" "In normal, day-to-day activities that is entirely true. And I have not inter- ferred with those orders in any way. However, when it comes to the Cattreth, my authority is absolute. Didn't you read that PADD from Starfleet Command?" "Well, all except the hard words..." Tellat put his head down and Monserrat was sure that he would weep this time, but a call from Ensign Cordwainer snapped his head back up, "The Cattreth Cube has become airborne!" "Launch all torpedoes - maximum yield! Target that ship!" Monserrat yelled. Lieutenant Sperr maneuvered the ship so that eight of the ship's torpedo tubes could be brought to bear on the Cube and Lieutenant Matalon sent the Quantums zipping out on their mission of death. A mission that was in vain! With a flash of annihilated atmosphere, the Cube's shields sprang to life. Simultaneously, beams flashed out from the massive geometry lesson and blasted six of the torpedoes. The last two impacted on the glowing shields where their explosive force was dissipated, doing little to no damage to the rapidly ascending Cattreth ship. "We're too late," Sperr observed, somewhat unnecessarily. "No we're not," Tellat's voice was heavy and thick, unspeakable sadness melded with unshakeable resolve. "Lieutenant Sperr, set course for that Cube - best possible speed. Lieutenant Matalon direct all power to forward shields and ready a full torpedo launch and phaser fire." Monserrat, her face white, managed to stammer out, "You intend to RAM them?!" "Do we have any other choice?" Tellat responded. "But even if we hit them square on, we won't destroy them!" Monserrat argued. "Doctor Stewart, what are the odds that a clean ram will at least disable the ship and force it to crash?" Stewart twiddled some controls on the Sciences Console and replied in a voice so dry that deserts were jealous, "87.3%, Sir." Monserrat wasn't finished, however, "What are the odds that the Aikido would be completely destroyed in such an action?" "96.4%!" his voice like the brittle dryness of a tomb. "We'll all be killed!" Thorne screamed. "Sir, this is no time to panic," Monserrat tried to comfort him. "Haven't you been paying attention?" Thorne demanded. "This is a perfect time to panic. We'll all be squashed like the tomatoes down in hydroponics when I take Alex down there to play!" "Very likely, yes," Tellat confirmed. "But we'll disable that ship long enough for your Starfleet to get a task force here to obliterate that planet." "Who died and left you in charge!" Thorne demanded, his terror apparent to everyone else on the Bridge who were fighting slightly more successful battles in keeping their panic in check. "Uncountable trillions," Tellat replied, his voice thick with the weight of his obligation to those long-dead. "Alex," Thorne said, desperately turning toward his son. "Think of something! I know you have it in you! What course of action should we take? What do you want to do?" Alex seemed to consider this question very carefully before replying, "I want to go potty!" he said brightly. "You and me both, kid," Monserrat whispered under her breath as Thorne led Alex into the Ready Room to take care of business. Out loud she said, "So, its a suicide run for us, then?" "Better that then a life of endless slavery to the Cattreth." "OK then! Let's get to it." She tapped her commbadge, "Engineering?" "Ifukube here." "Tetsuo - looks like we're headed for a crash. If for some amazing reason the warp core doesn't breach, I want you to trigger a breach, manually." "Sind Sie verrückt?" (Are you crazy?) "Yeah, well, verruckt you too! Just do it! Bridge out!" "Is everyone ready," she asked, mostly just to be calmed by the sound of her own voice. As long as she could hear that, it meant that she wasn't dead, yet. "Ready to suffer a horribly painful death by either crushing, explosive decompression, suffocation or exsanguination, you mean?" Matalon asked with gallows humor. "Yep, except for that last one. What's 'exsanguination'?" "Bleeding to death," Matalon explained. "Oh, OK," Monserrat acknowledged, nodding her head with understanding. "What was the question, again?" Cordwainer asked, the barest quiver in his voice betraying the bravado he was attempting to project. "Enough wisecracks!" Monserrat said with a grin. "Lets go put a little teeny, tiny dent in that Cube!" Nods came from all around the Bridge as the ship spun to a new heading. The wail of the suddenly overtaxed warp drives echoed eerily throughout the ship as Sperr overrode safeties to achieve as high a warp speed as was possible. <> he thought as the ship leapt towards Doneth Two. The Cube was just emerging from the atmosphere around the planet. It was still moving relatively slowly, as the comparatively dense air around the planet had not allowed the ship to move with any great velocity. The image of the Cube grew to fill the viewscreen - this was much closer than anyone had ever wanted to be to a Cube! Sperr had targeted a spot just about midway between the Cube's center and one of its edges, and the pipes, plating and other external features were soon visible in sharp detail. It was clear that impact would occur within seconds. Right on cue, the Computer spoke up, "Collision Alert! Collision Alert! Impact in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... Collision Averted!" Sighs of relief and 'huh?s' rang out around the Bridge as the massive impact failed to take place. Cordwainer switched the viewscreen to a reverse shot and an amazing sight greeted the Aikido's crew. The Cube had split into nine smaller Cubes! The Aikido had somehow flown between several of the pieces without hitting them. Instantly analysing the situation, Tellat barked out orders, "Target those Cubelettes! Take out as many as you can!" Matalon's hands flew over the Tactical Console loosing torpedoes and phaser beams in a wild orgy of celebration. He hadn't expected to be alive at this point and so he was trying to make sure that SOMEONE died so that Death wouldn't notice his error. Eight of the Cubelettes flew off in seemingly random directions, but the ninth one put itself directly in front of the Akira Class ship. In fact, it put itself on a collision course with the ship! "Evasive! yelled Monserrat as Matalon reconfigured his Console to target the lone remaining ship. The two swooped and twirled with the Cattreth ship buying time for the escaping Cattreth for several minutes before Matalon manage to destroy it. "Quickly, we must get away from the planet!" Tellat ordered. "We'll never catch those ships now," argued Monserrat. "Damn it! Move this ship!" Tellat yelled. With a shrug, Sperr sent the ship back towards the outer edge of the system. The ship had just cleared the orbital path of Doneth Four when a huge explosion took place on Doneth Two. Debris was actually hurled into space by the ferocity of the blast. Monserrat, Sperr, Matalon, Stewart and Cordwainer stared at Tellat. "The Cattreth destroyed the base to make sure we couldn't use anything that they might have left behind," he said matter-of-factly. The comm system sprang to life, "So should I cancel that warp core breach or what?" asked Ifukube. "Yes! Yes!" yelled Monserrat, who had completely forgotten her orders to the Engineer. "Ich wünsche, daß Sie Dummköpfe würden bilden Ihren Verstand verdammten!" (I wish you damned fools would make up your minds!) The crew were attempting to unwind after the tension of the past several days (not to mention the battle with the Cattreth Cube). Since the Aikido had been stationed over Earth, there had never been any sort of lounge installed and, in point of fact, the mess hall had been very little used. With thousands of restaurants within beamout distance of the ship, there had never really been any reason to use the ship's mess hall. That had all changed, recently. With the ship in space the mess hall had become a kind on communal gathering center. Here, rank was ignored and the crew felt free to discuss anything with anyone, while they ate. Captain Thorne and Alex never joined the crew in the mess hall. Commander Monserrat's argument that the crew would be more uninhibited without him present hadn't worked very well, but her new argument that it would be beneath him to eat with the crew had worked wonders. Either way, she didn't really care - she just didn't want to have the captain's bratty son around while she was eating. Another member of the crew who was noticeable by his absence was Tellat. He had never seen fit to 'grace them with his presence' as Monserrat put it. Never, that is, until now. Tellat walked into the mess hall like someone with a lot on his mind and the weight of a galaxy on his shoulders. Monserrat spied him as he came through the door, and watched him through slitted eyes. The jet-black alien made his way to the approximate center of the room and looked around himself before clapping his hands for attention. When a majority of the diners had at least quieted down a bit, he began to speak, "I would like to thank all of you for your efforts, today. Although we did not manage to destroy the Cattreth, we have put them on the run. I am hopeful that we will be able to rid your galaxy of this threat, soon." The assemblage seemed to be satisfied by this, and turned their attention back to their dinners - all except one, "This ridiculous, personal vendetta of yours will get us all killed!" Monserrat confronted the Paxtrian. "'Personal'? This has long gone past being 'personal'! Tell me - how many planets does your Federation count among its members and its protectorates?" "Somewhere around 200." "Imagine if every one of them were suddenly bombarded from space. Imagine if 75-90% of their populations were instantaneously vaporized and the remaining wretches enslaved to help their conquerors go out and do the same to another planet. Imagine the women turned into breeding machines to provide raw protoplasm to fuel a war machine so massive that entire planets would be converted into armories or shipyards. Imagine space filled with massive, kilometer-long Super Battleships - any one of which could completely destroy an entire planet. Have you got a good, clear picture of all of that in your mind? Good - because if we fail, you won't have to imagine it! All of that and more will come to pass. You must understand! Every one of the Cattreth who made it to your dimension have the entire knowledge of their entire Species! They can build 'was-is-will be' drives and jump a battlefleet anywhere, literally in the blink of an eye! They can construct ForceGro chambers and produce millions more Cattreth within a year! They have the knowledge necessary to build weapons the likes of which you can't even imagine! They require only two things right now - a suitable planet or planets to use as a base of operations and time to breed and build. We must deny them both of these or your Federation - your entire galaxy - is doomed!" "And to do this, what price would you pay? Would you sacrifice this ship, these people?" "The mission is the only thing that matters, the lives of everyone on board this ship are of, secondary importance. The one, overriding imperative is the absolute destruction of the Cattreth!" Tellat proclaimed, the red glow from his eyes becoming positively ghastly as he spoke. "Hmmph," snorted Monserrat. "Remember that /you/ are now on board this ship!" "If, by my death, I could assure that the Cattreth would cease to be, I would kill myself before I next drew breath." "And we're supposed to believe that your goal in all of this is only to save us? That the great and noble 'Paxtrian Hero' has come to this dimension to continue his holy work?" "To be absolutely frank - I couldn't possibly care less about your dimension!" Tellat announced, to the shock of everyone present. "I don't want the Cattreth taking over this, or any other dimension, and using its resources to gain enough strength to be able to return to /my/ dimension as conquerors. If I knew for certain that their Imperial aspirations would extend only as far as /this/ dimension, I'd throw myself out of the nearest airlock and go join all of the friends and family that I have lost over the past six centuries! I love battle and war about as much as I love sticking white-hot needles into my eyes, but I do what I have to in order to protect my people. I'm sorry that the protection of the innocent or weak is such an alien concept to all of you. What I had read of the Federation during my stay on the Menagerie had led me to believe that all of you shared many of the ideals that my Galactic Directorate held dear. If none of you have the stomach or the dedication to serve the greater good, then please return me to Earth where they can find me a crew who has the courage to get the job done! I am sick unto death of the petty whining and incompetence that seems to be the only contributions that this crew is capable of!" And with that, he turned on his heel and left the mess hall, leaving everyone else staring at the floor, embarrassed by Tellat's description of them, their appetites vanished and forgotten. "... and since then he's been sulking in his room!" concluded Monserrat. The indignation and embarrassment that she had felt after Tellat's abrupt departure from the mess hall two days prior had metamorphosized into a burning anger. <> she fumed. <> She did her best to ignore the little voice inside her that kept pointing out all of the help that they had had in taking down the Black Queens. "Sulking?" on the other end of the subspace channel, Admiral Sontak had been listening to the First Officer's complaints magnanimously - until that last one. "Commander Monserrat! I will have you know that for the past two days Tellat has been transmitting a nearly constant stream of data to Starfleet Technical. Designs for 'was-is-will be' detectors, probe design enhancements for longer-range detection of planetary population fluctuations, Cattreth ship specifications... quite frankly, I would be surprised if the poor man has gotten even an hour's worth of sleep! And all of this was in addition to the manufacturing and technical data that he had already transmitted to us as the Aikido was traveling to Doneth Two! I am truly disturbed by your lack of professionalism and understanding in this matter. The man is a complete stranger in this galaxy and instead of trying to fit in and make himself more comfortable, he sacrifices what little free time he has to try and give us the information we need to save ourselves from these Cattreth! He is doing everything he can to save us and yet you accuse him of being willing to risk your lives? Very well, Commander. return to Earth and rejoin the Earth Defense Force. I will find another ship willing to take on this mission. Sontak out!" Tellat found himself outside of Commander Monserrat's quarters, later that evening. He wasn't sure why she had summoned him here. As far as he knew, the ship had been ordered back to Earth, so she couldn't be trying to seduce him into giving the mission to somebody else. Oh well, he supposed that he would find out once he was inside. This thought in mind, he activated the door chime. The door opened immediately to reveal Commander Monserrat inside, attired in what appeared to be some sort of sweatsuit. "Please come in," she said. All traces of her previous anger seemingly vanished. "You wanted to talk to me?" Tellat asked, more than a little suspicion in his voice. "How do you do it? she asked, quietly. "Excuse me?" Tellat responded, not understanding. "You've seen death and destruction on a scale that no one else in this galaxy can even imagine. How can you keep going?" "If not me, then who? Unless one man can have the strength to continue the fight until its conclusion, how can anyone else be expected to do it? I have led literally millions into battle at one time or another, but the only reason they went was because there was someone to lead them." Monserrat nodded slightly at this. Whether it was because she agreed with him or because it was the answer that she had expected, Tellat couldn't tell. "Part of me wants to hate you," her words surprised him, but not as much as the ones that followed, "I've always wanted to be a leader, but I just don't have that fire, inside." "You are the First Officer of this ship," Tellat said, bewildered. "I have seen how the crew listens to you..." "They don't, really," Monserrat admitted to him, as she admitted it to herself. "They follow my orders because that is what their training tells them to do. They realize that between myself and Thorne, I am the lesser of two evils. But if they had a choice they wouldn't serve under me. They can all see the fear in me." "I don't understand," Tellat admitted. "I'm afraid of dying," she said simply. "That makes me an unsuitable leader and, somehow, they all sense it." "Most rational beings fear death," Tellat found himself in the unusual position of having to provide comfort for someone. He wasn't sure that he was up to it. "Not like me," Monserrat whispered. "Sometimes I find myself screaming in the middle of the night, sensing the darkness all around me. I go every minute of every day terrified. The only way I can avoid thinking about it is by getting angry about something. Lately, that something has been you - probably because you have been both so blasé about your own death and so seemingly driven to achieve your goals. I would like to apologize for the way I have been treating you. I am truly sorry." "I accept your apology. Is that why you asked me here?" "Partly, yes. The other reason is that I want you to ask Admiral Sontak to allow us to continue on this mission." "But, your fear..." "I've been running away from it for long enough," Monserrat said with deter- mination in her voice. "Maybe its time to try confronting it." "Very well," Tellat agreed. "Maybe along the way we'll be able to figure out where this fear of yours came from." "Oh that's easy enough to figure out," Monserrat said grimly. "Computer lock doors." Tellat wasn't sure what to think as Monserrat began removing her top. Had all of these intimate confessions caused her to think of him as some sort of special friend? As the top was discarded, Tellat realized that Monserrat hadn't been offering him her breasts. Between those breasts, in the center of her chest, was a twelve centimeter scar. Jagged and ugly, it was obviously the result of some serious injury she had suffered some time in the distant past. Tellat held out his hand and touched the affected skin and the contrast between his midnight flesh and the stark whiteness of the scar took away his breath. "What happened?" was all he could bring himself to say. "I was ten years old. There was a hovercar accident. A piece of plastic punctured both lungs and my heart. I was clinically dead for over four minutes before the doctors managed to revive me. You see, when most people talk about death, they have no idea of what they are talking about. I know only too well what it means. I nearly died once and I've been terrified of it ever since. You faced death all around you and it only made you more determined. Maybe I can help you cherish life a little and you can help me fear death a little less." "Perhaps," Tellat agreed. "Perhaps." Captain's Log; Stardate 58055.1 - First we're on a mission, then we're off the mission, then we're back on the mission again! I wish Starfleet would just make up its mind! Anyway, Lieutenant Sperr and Ensign Cordwainer managed to plot some course data as we engaged the Cubelettes over Doneth Two. We are now following what we hope is one of the other Cubelettes, although with our little detour back towards Earth for a time, it will be a while before we can have any hope of detecting our new quarry on even long range scanners. "Sir! Long range scanners reporting a contact!" Ensign Cordwainer shouted. Thorne barely looked up from the floor where he had been playing jacks with Alex. After the climatic battle with the Black Queens, while the ship was being repaired, the Kindergarten class had been removed from the ship along with all of the families stationed aboard. Alex had been particularly annoyed by this and with no victims his own age to terrorize, had gone on a rampage throughout the ship. Monserrat had finally resorted to storing the little hellion in a transporter buffer for several hours while Thorne looked for the boy in vain. A lowly yeoman had finally noticed the blinking light on the transporter console and re-materialized the boy. As the captain and his son were reunited, Monserrat was busy making notations in that lowly yeoman's permanent record. As far as she was concerned, 'lowly yeoman' was the highest rank that crewperson would ever obtain! At least Thorne had started being much more protective of the boy after that, only bringing him to the Bridge for brief periods at a time and keeping him safely in their quarters for long stretches. Tranquility had settled over the ship like a comforting blanket of dandruff falling on a black sweater. Tellat snapped to instant attention, ordering, "On screen - maximum magnification!" On the main viewscreen a tiny dot appeared. "Well, I /did/ say 'long range scanners'," Cordwainer explained. "Close on that target," Monserrat ordered, standing up from her seat. "Go to Red Alert, ready all weapons." Matalon, Sperr and Stewart busied themselves at their consoles and the dot slowly grew larger - and more Cube-shaped! "I'm not detecting any lifesigns," Doctor Stewart announced after several seconds. "Scan for booby-traps and evidence that another ship might have been here," Monserrat snapped. "Check Federation shipping logs to see if any ships might have passed through here in the last three days," she added as an afterthought. "No booby-traps," Stewart announced after taking some more readings. "In fact, I'm detecting no power sources, no electrical activity, nothing. That's just a hollow shell out there!" "Federation shipping records indicate that eight ships have been through this particular section of space, recently," Ensign Cordwainer reported. "So, ve've lost dem," Matalon announced what was on all their minds, using his fake Russian accent since Thorne was on the Bridge. "For the time being," Tellat agreed. "But we will find them." "Yes," agreed Monserrat. Since her confession to the alien, the two had worked much better together, nearly becoming the team that a Captain and a First Officer should be. With Thorne spending so much more time with Alex, and with Tellat having complete authority over all Cattreth operations, which now promised to take up nearly all of the ship's time, this new spirit of cooperation seemed to promise good things to come. The rest of the crew were busy trying to prove that Tellat had made an error when he had labeled them 'incompetent'. All in all, things were looking up as the ship settled into its new routine. Monserrat sat back into her seat ready to face this new challenge, when a sudden, piercing pain in her left buttock sent her jumping back to her feet. Turning around she saw one of Alex's jacks had been placed on her seat! Whirling, she caught sight of the giggling six-year-old as the turbolift doors shut, whisking the evil child and his equally giggling father to safety. Rubbing the affected area gingerly, the First Officer took her seat, again, "What now?" she asked. "The designs for the new monitoring probes should have been transmitted to all Starfleet ships by now. Once deployment has begun, we can begin monitoring the probe network to determine the most likely targets. Until then, let's head for the nearest Starbase for supplies and a brief bit of R&R. Until we have some data to go on, we're just wasting resources out here," Tellat decided. "Wow, what happened to all that 'gung ho' stuff?" Matalon asked. "600 years of war have shown me that patience can be a great asset. Provide me with a target, and 'that 'gung ho' stuff' will reappear," assured Tellat. "Until that time, however, someone has promised to help me to 'cherish life' a little more. That being the case," Tellat held out his hand to Monserrat, "would you like to have dinner with me?" "I'd be delighted. Matalon, you have the Bridge." "Did I just see what I /think/ I just saw?" Cordwainer asked, aloud, as the pair left. "I think so," Matalon managed to force out. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Cordwainer asked. "With the Great Bird as my witness, I really don't know," admitted Matalon. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see," Stewart offered sagely. "Like we have any choice!" Matalon responded. "Is this wise?" Monserrat asked as she and Tellat seated themselves around the dining alcove in Tellat's quarters. "Eating? Well, yes, without food basic bodily functions break down and..." "I /know/ eating is important!" Monserrat interrupted, laughing. "I meant the two of us becoming more than co-workers." "I think we have already become more than that," Tellat offered. "Yes," Monserrat agreed, sliding her hand into his, and then her into his lap, and, finally, their lips together in a kiss. "Is this wise?" Monserrat asked again. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see," Tellat responded, and then kissed her again. Well I don't know if I'm ready To be the man I have to be With Arms Wide Open - Creed Next Time: The Menagerie returns to Foreena Four to give the OverMind more training in being corporeal. What better way to give this training than with another Dungeon Crawl? "Elemental Temple of the Elder God 2" Available December 5th! And don't miss the continuing adventures of the USS Aikido in Star Traks: Hunters - "A-Hunting, we will go". Available 10/02/2006! I welcome Reader Feedback! Please let me know what you've thought of Melting Pot so far, and, in particular this story! Contact me at: meltingpot@khobrah.net