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Welcome to the Second Season of Melting Pot - who'da thunkit? Copyright 2005. "Wolf's Bane" by Paul Cloutier I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty. Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1816-1841) Captain Merriweather Chambers was feeling lucky. In fact, he was feeling very, very lucky. Today would go down in Starfleet history! Today would be the day that he, Captain Merriweather Gorganzola Chambers, brought the savage natives of Sasparilla Seven under the protective umbrella of the United Federation of Planets. To date, fourteen previous captains had tried and failed to complete this mission. All fourteen, along with their away teams, had been captured by the Sasparillians, displayed publically in cages and, eventually eaten! After the first six attempts, Starfleet had designated the mission as 'Volunteer Only.' The mission had taken on a kind of 'Holy Grail' mythos about it. It was whispered that any captian who could sucessfully complete the mission would be automatically promoted to admiral! This was Chamber's dream. He would become an admiral - and not just any admiral - no sir! He would be the admiral who completed the Sasparilla Mission! Chambers wasn't exactly sure why the Federation wanted the Sasparillians to join so badly, he hadn't really read much of the mission packet that had arrived after he had asked for this assignment. In point of fact, he really didn't much care. The welfare of the Sasparillians was way down on his list of priorities. When you got right down to it, the welfare of the United Federation of Planets was pretty far down that list, too. But right at the top was - Glory -Promotion - Universal Acclaim - Worship - for Merriweather Gorganzola Chambers! Chambers optimism, in the face of what many would have called suicidal odds, was based entirely on a recent addition to his crew. Chamber's ship, the USS Yamoto had recently docked at Starbase 19. While there, Chambers had, quite by accident, run into an old Academy buddy, Captain Amos Caruthers. While at Starfleet Academy, 30 years ago, the two men had not really been friends, barely even aquaintences, but now that they each had their own ships, the comaraderie of being in the same graduation class seemed to be coming out. Amos had bumped into Merry while on his way to the Starbase's personnel office. He had been about to file the paperwork transferring several crewmembers off of the ship for re-assignment, having taken on several new graduates from the latest class from the Academy. Since Merryweather had been on his way to actually get some new crew replacements (having lost several when the ship had been caught in the middle of an ion storm. OK so maybe if he had read the morning status reports, they could have avoided the storm, but who had time for such things?). Feeling generous, Chambers had offered to take the forms up, for Caruthers. Caruthers quickly agreed since this would give him more time to spend helping his raw recruits settle in. Chambers chucked to himself as he walked on, anything to help out a friend - namely himself! He could save a lot of paperwork if he just transferred Caruthers people onto his ship! Not only that, but Caruthers had a reputaion for training up his people well - many had gone on to become key members of the crews of several important ships. Ha! Chambers laughed to himself, this time they'll be members of MY crew. We'll see about those efficiency reports now! As Chambers idlely leafed through the PADDs (he really didn't care WHO he got, anyone trained by Caruthers was good enough for him) when his eye was caught by a tiny bit of data on one of the PADDs. A Graaken! Caruthers was transferring a Graaken! Didn't the fool realize what a goldmine he had! You could keep your Klingons and your Andorians. The Graaken were the most visciously aggressive members in the Federation. It was incredibly rare that one was ever accepted into Starfleet, since their visciousness was only held in check by an oath that each Graaken took upon reaching adulthood. In fact, each adult Graaken wore a beaten metal torc around their neck symbolizing that oath. Chambers thought back to his days at Starfleet Academy. They had studied the First Contact between one of humanities earliest space exploration groups. This group had left the Earth on a missionary mission, bringing the Word of their God to the heathen aliens. The missionaries had found the Graaken and been virtually exterminated, overnight. Until the ship carrying Father Phaser had arrived. Chambers thought back to the report he had done on Graaken culture for his Anthropolgy class. rather than reading the boring old textPADD, he had watched a holovision account of that first meeting. What had it been called, now - oh yes, "Father Phaser conquers the Unknown!" Stupid teacher had given him a "D" on that report. Who cared if the holomovie was slightly liberal with its retelling of the story. It had been a Hell of a lot more entertaining than the class lectures! (during which Chambers had fallen asleep, truth to tell). But "Father Phaser Conquers the Unknown!" wasn't foremost in Chamber's mind as he read that Graaken designation in the Species field of that personnel report. No, he was thinking about the sequel - "Father Phaser Conquers Everything!" That movie had depicted how the remarkably un-aged Father Phaser had continued on his misionary work, twenty years after pacifying the Graaken. How he, and his band of Graaken missionaries had travelled through space subduing literally dozens of Species. All Phaser had to do was remove the torc from the neck of one of his Graaken (thereby removing them from the obligation of their oath) and the Graaken would revert to their savage, aggressive state, obliterating any opposition. With a simple thumbprint on the PADD, Chambers could transfer that tame killing machine to HIS crew. Immortality would be his! Laughing at his own cleverness, Chambers finished up quickly in the Personnel office and made his way back to his ship. later that day, when the personnel requisitions and transfers made their way through the system, Lieutenant Gisech took his position as Chief of Security on board the Yamoto. Nevermind the fact that Chambers had transferred his former Security Chief to Engineering, Chambers now had his path to greatness assured! He had immediately sent in the required paperwork to volunteer for the Sasparilla Mission and, after just over two weeks of high-warp travel, here he was about to have his appointment with destiny.