etymologyofmind

[etymologyofmind]

Pushing the Bounds

Previously...

And now...

Within the body of a ship, normal space was usually taken for granted. Certainly, there were occasions where anomalous this or unprocessed that made it through the shields or warp fields, but usually it was a pretty stable environment, by design. Most species who travelled through space needed such stability, integral as it was to biological function, so it was uncommon that the inside of a ship endured abnormal conditions for very long. Automation kicked over, suppression systems kicked in, and sometimes, in dire scenarios, atmosphere kicked out, with a number of safety protocols aligned to trying to keep crew in when the rest of it had to go out. MacDougal’s Gambit, however, was such an audacious plan, that much of the routine protections which had not been disrupted by the predation of the pack had needed to be put on standby, or disabled outright, to allow the effort to take place.

On the bridge, a decision had been made to press on into the unknown in a desperate bid for survival. Controls made of light and energy had received inputs calculated by a team of mad geniuses who had proposed that the best way to squeeze power out of dying engines was to literally squeeze it, and had thus fabricated a circumstance where the ship’s warp field—its tether to reality in the much more abstract stratum of subspace through which it travelled—had been compressed and focused through a lens of spacetime which would theoretically vault them across an unexpected expanse of space, while leaving behind the impression they had been destroyed by the forces they toyed with. Combining theories of transporter mechanics and warp field theory, gravitational force and spacetime lensing, the crew of the Vellouwyn had stacked edge case against edge case into a faint chance of success. As soon as the final keystroke was locked in, powerful mechanisms of science distorted the powerful forces of nature, and the battered ship leapt through the eye of the needle as if pursued by angels and demons alike, pulling their warp bubble with them in an inversion field which had the anticipated effect of destroying the warp focus gate.

The unanticipated effect was that it had pulled subspace through with it, and though the Vellouwyn’s jump was intended to be brief and stealthy, the hole it ripped in the fabric of the sector falling away behind it was anything but.

Deep in Engineering, Crewman Owouom Hotler was manning a monitoring station, a third-tier backup in case something went wrong. He was no warp expert, no engineer in fact, having a specialization in exolinguistics and exopictics which came naturally to his race of polyglots, but the Gambit was so unconventional that it was considered to be an all-hands-on-deck scenario, and no member of the crew was found resting during the jump. When the moment came, however, it was immediately apparent to Hotler that something had gone wrong, and that he was quite possibly the only crew member who would not be cripplingly affected.

The Vohn Barran people were few in number: their kind were probably an engineered species, derivative of some other which had either been made extinct or had left the Beta quadrant behind long ago, and the few colonies which persisted had been run by the Emerald Chain for centuries. Literal slaves, unable to function without the life support systems provided by their dominant owners, Hotler’s kind had been given to industrializing the least hospitable environments imaginable, working through asteroids without life support, class Y planets, and other such terrain while their populations were managed like cattle. It had been barely half a century since the Federation had liberated them, but the Vohn Barran had taken to their freedom fervently, and invested their gratitude and passion into the society which had given it to them. Regardless of the efforts of federation scientists and the persistence of the Vohn Barran people, there had yet to be developed any therapy or procedure which could fully liberate them from their life support apparatuses, as an un-augmented Vohn Barran had never been found to be compatible with any of the standard environments favoured by other species.

As such, when the Vellouwyn fell into subspace in its compressed envelope of reality, Hotler found himself suddenly buoyant, not as though gravity had failed, but as if it had thickened into a fluid state. The light of the ship took on a distinctly blue cast, dark and deep with shadow, and nearby holograms and projected controls distorted into fragmented apparitions. He felt the pressure of the environment around him pressing down dangerously on his leathery outer skin as the nictating membrane over his eyes slid into place reflexively, and the environmental collar he wore continued to provide sustenance as he flailed to get his bearings, but it was barely a heartbeat before he recognized that none of the rest of the crew would be able to endure these conditions like he could.

Point of fact, a crew member nearby—his friend, Crewman Quorrok—flailed in a look of sudden panic and agony, and started struggling to find footing in an environment which offered him little purchase. From the corner of his eye, he could see that further down the engineering section, the Saurion exobiology specialist who had taken such an interest in him, Crewman Solnus, was scrabbling at the deck plating to try and find proper purchase as he struggled to move aft. Hotler knew that if there was anything to be done—and he did not know if there was anything to be done—he would need to act fast. Glancing over his controls as he had been drilled to do, the readouts told him that something was wrong with the warp field dynamics, beyond what had been anticipated by the Gambit. It was compressed, as expected, but distorted, almost as if it had produced a twist in its projected frequency, and it rotated around the ship like a screw. He would not be able to do anything from this station, but if he could reach the emergency controls that they had set up at the injection chamber…

Hotler had aced courses in zero gravity training. Moving in low to no gravity environments had been bred into the instincts of his people. He had also mastered courses on various other special athletics, from aquatic to climbing, high gravity to low atmosphere, and the adaptable Vohn Barran was in his element here. Catching a hooked toe on the edge of the console behind him, he clamped his hind-heel onto it so that he had a solid grip, then bent powerful legs to launch himself down the channel along the bottom level of the engineering lower deck. The warp drive, in its horizontal configuration, was not a standard for Star Fleet ships of this century, but the Vellouwyn was nothing if not unique; it spanned nearly four decks in length, with scientific research stations studded along its length, and the foremost segment now missing to have formed the warp lens they’d just launched themselves through. Kicking off of bulkheads and grappling with ladders, he sailed over Solnus’ head, not pausing to give him any fruitless comfort, and made his way to the emergency control station.

Midway along the warp core, Hotler came upon the scene. There was a cross-brace here at the second segment of the core where power systems ran through from floor to ceiling, and wall to wall. If anything aboard the Vellouwyn could be considered ‘central engineering’, this was it, and for the Gambit, most of the important officers were here. Warp Systems Specialist Jan’aar was reaching for one of the consoles, his craggy Xindi Arboreal eyes bulging with effort and asphyxiation, while nearby the Denobulan-Antaran that served as Chief Engineer, Huda Vantel, floated as if transfixed by some unseen spike. Pratt Denning and Tendan Omar seemed to be struggling with one another, trying to right themselves and panicking for the resistance of the other, while the Tellarite specialist in Fundamental Forces, Fargan Dend, was swiping at something half seen, which Hotler’s broad-spectrum vision told him was probably the Holographic CTO, trying to manifest in the broken light. None of them were very lucid, nor very much in control, so he kicked off of the bulkhead, moving to the console that Jan’aar was groping for and assessing the situation.

The information on the console was not helpful; Hotler was, again, not an engineer, and it was much more complicated than he was able to interpret. However, one index along the side listed a surprisingly large number of defected safety protocols, and levels of threat and risk reaching well outside of range, next to a glyph which was flashing ominously with the words ‘Emergency Abort Sequence’. With no better option, the Vohn Barran tapped the glyph, and suddenly the world collapsed desperately back into focus. The klaxon sound of red alert howled desperately around him, nearly masking the repetitive whumph as the bodies of his fellow crew fell heavily to the deck around him. He suspected that the scene was similar throughout the ship, and hoped he’d been fast enough to have spared his ship most of the damage. An instant after the blue light swung back to a fuller spectrum, Doc snapped into existence, checking Hotler’s unresisting form aside to feverishly enter commands into the console. “See to the team!” he barked; “Get me Jan’aar, I need him to cap this reaction!” was all he said before investing his full attention into the work.

Hotler was, unfortunately, also not a medic, but the recent endeavors with the pack hunt had left him with more insight and trivia into how his more normally adjusted crew worked with injuries and trauma. He could probably stem bleeding, certainly knew what a tourniquet was, but wasn’t entirely sure how whatever had just transpired would have affected a space-normal humanoid body. He leaned down next to Jan’aar, and, mercifully, found him already trying to recover. Blood flowed from his nose, and, surprisingly, his ears, which Hotler suspected was a bad sign, but the Arboreal was resilient, and both waved the Vohn Barran’s help off, and accepted his help up, with good humour. Getting him leaned against a console near Doc’s position to recuperate, Hotler started working his way around the engineering nerve center, working to try and get the team stable.

It wasn’t long before Solnus joined him, looking little worse for wear, probably somewhat more resilient as a Saurian than some of the others: amphibious nature ran among his people, and he had redundant membranes like Hotler’s nictating eyelids and an impulse which sealed his nostrils when submerged that probably served him well. The Kiley, Pratt Denning, was snoring fitfully in an unconscious state which wasn’t something Hotler wanted to risk disrupting, and the Fargan Dend had pulled himself up beside Jan’aar to get to work on whatever it was they were doing. Hopeful for a general recovery, he allowed himself a moment to relax. A moment after his muscles untensed, he felt a hand grip him by the elbow, and, startled, turned to see Doc, the Holographic department head of the Technology division who’d pushed him aside scowling at him. If he could sweat, this would be where he would.

Doc looked him up and down, callously took a grip on the breather which was anchored into Hotler’s face, and gave it a firm, but gentle, shake. “Seventy-three seconds, Crewman. That’s worth a commendation. Go see who else you can help; I’ll be filing this in my report.” He smiled a half smile, which looked begrudging on his stern face, but there was unmistakable pride in the holographic eyes. “Check in with Sick Bay and see if they need you first.”

Then he was gone, back to the console, chattering with Jan’aar and the others to try and deal with the technology of the situation, leaving Crewman Hotler more off guard than he’d been when the world fell out of the warp bubble. Mutely, he turned and walked towards the corridor with the turbo lifts, intent on making his way to Sick Bay as ordered.

Surprises waited there, but he didn’t know that; not yet. Nor, unfortunately, did anyone else.

[etymologyofmind]

The Hounds at Heel

Previously...

And Now...

Often bloodied are bared teeth: a Klingon proverb from a more romantic era, when such a statement was cautionary rather than something used as dubious encouragement. Durok considered it as he tasted blood in his own grit toothed grimace, breathing in the smoke of his fiery bridge, and glared balefire through the flickering viewscreen at the pack of hounds that pursued them. Two days had passed since the Vellouwyn had destroyed and crippled their latest pursuers, and the pack had returned in force since, with new ships and new weapons and new tactics to teach them of their inferiority. It worked, too: the Vellouwyn hadn’t been a warship at the outset, despite her better-than-average endowments, but the pursuers were made for brutality, and it had been clear all along that all that was needed for victory was the decision to take it.

Nevertheless, several of his advisors in the Cultural Sciences had advised that it was likely part of their society to make an affair of embarrassing prey, bringing them death by a thousand cuts, maintaining military superiority and a state of terror while causing the least actual damage for as long as possible. ‘Run. Hide. Flee. Prey.’ They were to be the fox, harried by their hounds, until exhaustion took them and they offered no more game.

The new ships worked in sets, pairs or threes, setting traps with energy snares that pulled her jarringly off course, or washing subspace wakes through the Vellouwyn’s warp field which sent shear forces through her hull. There were others coming, too: long distance sensors detected a small fleet massing, but moving at no great haste, gathering at a leisurely pace as if to fete the demise of their prey. It was galling, insulting, and petty, and despite himself, Durok could not help but fall prey to the goad: this was his ship, his mission, and his crew, and not only were they in absolute mortal peril, it was being drawn out like a game by an enemy who would not even face them.

So far there had been three casualties: Ensign Parva Hashjat, a specialist in solar architecture, had succumbed to the injuries he had sustained in the first attack alongside Commander Thomas, who was still sedated, clinging to life with dwindling prospects; Petty Officer Rowan MacDougal had been unfortunate, perhaps hasty, and had not tethered to the rail on the upper engineering deck when one of the snare traps had jerked the Vellouwyn around like a snagged fish: she’d broken her neck in the fall, dying almost instantly; and finally, Crewman Anan, one of Star Fleet’s first J’naii servicemen, who had been interested in enlisting after their tour with the Vellouwyn, only to be ended by the consuming fire of an overloaded plasma conduit. When a member of a Star Fleet crew died, it was not always clear to whom the responsibility of informing next of kin would fall, but Durok took their deaths as a personal loss, and it was his sad duty with each life lost to compose a saga due to their honour and dignity, that their families would take solace in the meaning of their demise. The sound of their litanies played a crushing barrage in his ears as he considered the vengeance he wished to reap of their murderous killers.

The loss of MacDougal had been particularly challenging in the moment, as her role in the upcoming experiment was a crucial one. While Lieutenant Jan’aar was a genius in warp technology of his own right, Rowan had been an inspired and creative experimental thinker in the field, and she had been one of the think tank team who had concocted their desperate escape plan from the endless hunt. Her calculations and simulations had been run and rerun throughout the ship, being vetted and reconsidered and refined between some of the Federation’s finest available minds, and deemed feasible. It would be desperate, and it would take luck, but the conditions here and now were good enough, given the alternative of being lightly abraded out of existence. As it was, they would need to make do, and improvise to the best of their ability if something went awry. If they succeeded, Jan’aar had sworn the maneuver would be called MacDougal’s Gambit: an honour Durok found quite fitting.

As the hunter fleet began to draw closer and closer, Durok hoped that they would be able to pull off the gambit before being overwhelmed by their attackers. It was clear that the ceremony of the hunt was coming to a close, and the rest of the pack were coming in for the kill. In an effort to conserve themselves for the plan, the Vellouwyn had feigned critical damage to their primary warm systems, and were limping by on secondary systems, struggling along at factor 3: the Engineers had proposed that dropping their speed would help sell their ruse when they eventually made their bid for escape, but it drew out the amount of time it would take them to get to their staging point.

As such, every hour of the past few days had been harrowing, to the point where Commander Barr had ordered Ensign Sobrel to prepare regimens of sedatives and stimulants for crew rotations to enable the crew to get any rest under the constant barrage of psychological torments, earning the pharmacology specialist the nickname of ‘Unsobrel’. As a counterpoint, the Cultural team had taken on extra duties, with the Tellarite psychiatrist, Doctor Ragga Benel leading the Risian recreation lead, Emi Beel, and the Mizarian pastor, Ren Sogra, in a shift rotation of crew analysis and disengagement exercises to try and keep morale up and anxiety down. Chetta Hun, the Haliian responsible for their department, was running herself ragged using her natural empathy to identify people in critical distress to dispatch support and defuse situations of escalating turmoil. If it weren’t for the life-and-death circumstances which had led them to this point, Durok would be grinning like a Cheshire cat at how well the specialist teams on his crew were accenting one another’s skills to produce such professional synergy.

By contrast, it was interesting to see the ways the members of his crew he had not hand picked were managing in the crisis. The Foothold crew, who had joined them for one reason or another beyond the wormhole, were a peculiar bunch who, by and large, had little cause to mingle with a federation crew. Errn in particular was a misfit for the situation they were in, as the Breen was uncomfortably close to the scapegoat that could be produced for an irrational projection: their pursuers were, after all, still not Breen, but the resemblance was uncanny. The Dominion consultant was invaluable as a font of information, but the unconventional communication and isolationist demeanor made them hard to engage, and the armoured alien spent most of their time in quarters, so as to not antagonize the crew. The only crewmember they seemed willing to entertain routinely was the Daystrom consultant who had been the one to recommend the Breen to Durok. A Vulcan, Veden Oran was comfortable with just about anyone aboard, but only found the reciprocal from the more aloof and logical demographic during a highly emotional crisis. She had been working collaboratively with a number of teams off and on to try and track her expertise with artificial intelligence and engineered logic to codebreaking the pack’s motives and internal language.

For her part, the Suliban observer who the Foothold council had placed with the ship spent most of her time on the bridge, observing, and trying to find ways to not seem out of place. There was little call for her skillsets—infiltration and espionage were hard to implement when under siege and on the run—and her tactical contributions were outmatched by the MacDougal Gambit, leaving her aimless and sullen. She spent her time lingering in Durok’s proximity, capitalizing on his downtime to pace and rant her anxieties at him during a debriefing he allowed her now and then when he stepped off the bridge, or skulking through the ship practicing her skullduggery for self-fulfillment, since there was little of value to snoop into aboard the Vellouwyn itself at the moment. Few paid her much attention, even if they noticed her, which only added to her ire.

Ranoch, on the other hand, was a good fit during the crisis. He had attached himself unofficially to the Cultural team’s efforts, and it was surprising how often the CCO found him talking with, working with, or ‘fighting’ with one of the crew who was approaching a crisis point before she arrived. Usually, the Cardassian’s odd approach was the right fit to distract or de-escalate someone at the right time, and he usually came out of it without having made any enemies, speaking well of his knowledge of people. When he wasn’t squashing unrest in his own way, he spent a lot of time with the rest of the forensics crew, solidifying his relationships and preparing profiles for their collaborative manhunt, and analyzing the data they’d collected before coming to this part of space to look for leads. They would often find themselves playing card games in one of the mess halls together, eavesdropping on other conversations while they talked through their various topics among themselves.

Everyone on the crew had been deputized for one or more jobs, some on their normal roster, and others trained on demand. The Vellouwyn was a small ship with a close-knit compliment, but under the circumstances, the number of them who had been trained or retrained in systems maintenance tasks was managed well by ensuring that the cross-training had been routine before the incident: there simply weren’t enough crew aboard to columnize crew assignments in a way which meant that departments could be isolated from one another, so roles like security and maintenance were communalized. First aid had also taken an uptick recently, although rather under more duress, and the opportunities for learning cross-species nuances when treating bleeding, trauma, or other injuries were the subject off-duty discussion, to the point where it had become something of a trivia challenge among the crew to come up with relevant, respectful examples of alien first aid references. That the crew were composed most significantly of Humans, Vulcans, Tellarites and Andorians was offset by the above-average numbers of less common species to serve on a Terran design Star Fleet vessel, though many common traits abounded among the others, and the specialists in both the Medical and Science corps encouraged the exchanges with great interest.

Now, though, everyone aboard was at the edge of their seats, waiting on the trick to come. Approaching a solar system, not for the first time in their efforts to escape the pack, the Vellouwyn had seen far better days. Her hull was blistered in places where the living skin colonies had been killed, either in early attacks where they had yet to close off the colonies, or in subsequent ones where some direct hit had taken our shielding over these colonies, causing the ship to ooze biomatter as it limped along. In others, ablative shielding had been dented, cracked, peeled, or ejected to keep damaged systems from dragging them back. One such ejection had been coupled with another Wu maneuver, and the dorsal tractor array had been burnt out throwing a shard of reinforced metal into an unprepared pursuer, crippling them. Her nacelles were trailing thin streams of contaminated plasma, although this effect was more intentional than consequential, and she struggled to keep the lights on across all decks.

Each time they’d entered a system in a bid to escape pursuit, they’d found the various hiding spots and blind shadows studded with sleeping sensor drones and satellites which broadcast short range alerts to their presence, and the pursuit began anew. They had tried gravity slings, solar corona surfing, atmospheric hide and seek maneuvers, all to no effect: once they’d tried to outfly the pack through the rubble field of a planet’s rings, only to be reminded how outclassed they were on the agility factor. Once, they had almost opted to hide in the deep crater of a fractured moon, only to abandon the premise when Durok’s gut told him they would be worse off cornered and captured; well enough, too, because as they flew away from the shattered satellite, two fresh pursuers had joined the hunt from its ruined heart.

The Gambit would be their last chance, and it would need to be perfectly executed if it had any hope of working; all of their buildup, their ploys, their false impression of vulnerability, would need to be brought to the fore at once in a precisely synchronized display which, should it fail, would end the expedition of the Vellouwyn most ingloriously. Their salvation rose before them on the viewscreen, not ahead, but their sensors had brought it into focus as they approached indirectly: an opal hued gas giant, replete with Helium 3, a number of common elements, and some reactive exotic elements which the Science team— almost all of them collaboratively in fact—had selected for the likelihood of the world ever sustaining life in any of its known capacities to be as close to zero as they could hope to calculate, as a member of a system with similar prospects. What it did have, according to their team, was the right chemical composition to create a particular reaction, if they wanted to treat their pursuers to a fireworks display.

Durok issued the command ship-wide to brace for engagement, and ordered the Caitan Ensign, Bhutan Rhee, to set the determined course and drop into the system as close as possible to their feeding point before coming out of warp. Rhee, being an Anomalous Navigation specialist, may have lacked the precision of the Chief Conn Officer, or the strategic chops of their Tactical Nav specialist Yao Si Gur, but she would be instrumental in the success of the Gambit, so she held the controls. Signaling to the forward torpedo controls, Durok instructed Thy’ren Shurel, his Andorian Chief Tactical officer, to have Junior Lieutenant Horak, the Aenar Guided Systems specialist, prepare their special weapon for deployment.

The moment was upon them. As soon as they came out of warp, not only would their immediate pursuers drop into normal space alongside them, but the hunting party several light years off would catch up almost instantaneously. Since they planned to give no indication that they were not heading for the system’s densely shrouded star, which was wrapped almost to obscurity in a debris field from a number of system-forming planetary collisions which had produced a chaotic multitude of accretion discs that might offer some concealment, there was the odd chance that it would take them time to re-orient and catch up to pursue at impulse. Timing would be critical.

Durok hung on the moment, closing his eyes in a moment of aimless prayer, before he opened them, filled with fierce determination. “Ensign Rhee. Begin the Gambit.”

The Caitan’s fingers tapped out a set of commands, and the ship lurched violently as it threw itself out of warp, then jettisoned reactive ballast from the nacelles to ignite a torturously overclocked turn at full impulse. The maneuver flared brilliantly in space behind them, leaving a shower of glittering reactive particles as they careened wildly into a drifting tangent that settled them almost exactly on their projected flightpath, which appeared as an overlay on screen. The move blew out power relays all across the ship, and the bones of the vessel shuddered under the torturous forces, but she was small and tightly built, and held together honourably under the stress. Durok grinned, certain that Quartermaster M'Tembe would have words with him when they got back to Deep Space 5.

It was a full fifteen seconds before their two pursuit ships dropped into normal space behind them, and another thirty for the pursuing fleet. For the first time they got a clear look at the ships which comprised it, fully a dozen different designs from great to small, swarming around what looked to be a mobile carrier station at the heart of the storm. What sensors they had would be gulping data on their pursuers while they could be spared, and it would certainly keep someone’s project alive for years piecing through the data. For now, other than a moment spent appreciating the uniqueness of their pursuers, Durok did not have time to admire them.

Ensign Rhee was steadily making course adjustments, leading the Vellouwyn’s taxed systems into a clean vector on their flight trajectory, while maintaining a flexible margin for evasion. They would have some time before the pack behind them would be able to fire on them, but they would, inevitably, be overtaken before they could complete the work. Their path led them directly into the gas giant’s atmosphere, at the layer where the density of the cloud cover began to produce dangerous shear forces for a ship in the Vellouwyn’s shape. Around him, the ship worked as though automated, with crew having drilled for days on the plan easily executing pre-determined plans, checks, and preparations without his need to issue orders. His work had been done, and it was up to him to trust his crew, and wait, hoping the need to command any changes to the plan would not arise.

As they delved into the planet’s atmosphere, the Engineers opened up the Bussard Collectors on the nacelles, as well as the anomalous material collector on the ventral bay beneath the deflector dish. Any gap in the ship’s hull which could gather material from the atmosphere was opened, and their deflector configuration was altered to produce as much wake-sculpting as possible. The result was a marked slowdown from full impulse to nearly three quarters, and a brilliant display as the gaseous clouds around them parted fluidly, as if the ship were parting a sea of charged particles, and in all directions crackling storms of lightning and luminous waves of ionized radiation cascaded beautifully over the surface of the world. It washed over them, around them, and through them in many places on the ship, and though their hounds managed to catch up almost immediately as they were slowed by the splashdown, the wave of charged matter around them concealed and protected them from the weapons they brought to bear. Until they were stopped, and until gravity and momentum levelled out their gouge through the atmosphere, they would have marginal protection from attack, but more importantly, from sensors.

Over the secure internal coms channel, the Science stations began reporting in in sequence; “Ensign Omar, Exotic Matter, Check, begin MacDougal’s Gambit.”; “Crewman Tusok, Geo-Science, Check! Begin MacDougal’s Gambit!”; “Ensign Denning, Radiation, Check, begin MacDougal’s Gambit.”; “Ensign Dend, Fundamental Forces, Check, begin MacDougal’s Gambit!”; not in sequence, but spilling in all at once, various stations monitoring special sensor equipment, tailoring shield harmonics and collaborating on power frequencies, until a lightboard in front of the Chief Engineer and the Warp Systems specialist lit up green, and after a collaborative exchange, nodded to Captain Durok.

“Durok to forward torpedo room; launch the device. Begin MacDougal’s Gambit.”

A moment later, there was a resonant sound which coursed through the ship as a photonic projectile was launched from the forward tubes. It glittered with a beautiful golden white light, shot through with pink, purple, and blue hues which contrasted the warm yellow eerily. The device twinkled forward into their shield bubble, which had been extended and distorted, elongated to match a novel configuration which MacDougal had proposed before her unkind demise, and which could only be sustained under the kinds of pressure present in this stratum of a gas giant. Shield frequencies and speed had been tailored just so, resistances produced at exact standards, such that this device, if used in absolute desperation, may just save them from their circumstance.

It was a wormhole generator, after all, but rather than being an aperture between two points in space, it would serve as a warp bubble compressor, launching the Vellouwyn beyond its normal warp threshold at the expense of the device itself. Essentially producing a particle stream through subspace, the compression wave of their own conserved warp potential would shoot them through the eye of this artificial lens, collapsing the event horizon behind them into an antimatter explosion. This would consume the device and set off a reaction in the planet’s atmosphere which should, in theory, both cover their escape and convince the pursuing pack of their absolute obliteration.

That was, in theory. None of this had ever been tested, no experiments similar had ever been conducted: this was a gamble, and it was named for Rowan MacDougal, who had concocted it in a hallmark display of the Human propensity to defy the laws of reality to suit their ends.

The device flared a brilliant blue as it reached its initiation point: it was made out of an experimental warp core which they’d spent the past week assembling from the research components tied into the ancillary warp theory laboratory in the bowels of engineering. It would not produce the kind of thrust required to fly a ship, but it was not made for that: it did produce a highly chaotic warp field, which whipped atmospheric particles around it in a dazzling, terrifying vortex that gaped open before them in waiting. Durok gripped the arms of his chair, hesitating to issue the order, and finding it ultimately out of his hands as the plan played out, and Ensign Rhee committed to the course she’d set when she agreed to this madness in the first place. Her voice was firm, but tense, as she called out: “Initializing synchronized warp field. Jump in three, two, one…”

And in a flash, an instant, a moment of glorious triumph, everything went cataclysmically wrong.

And now...

[etymologyofmind]

The Hounds of Hell

The bridge of the Vellouwyn lurched as an energy discharge off the port side collapsed a pocket of subspace into a temporary antimatter void. The implosion wasn’t close enough to significantly damage the ship, but shields and ablative plating had taken a beating during their encounters over the past week, and the ship’s energy systems were having a hard time reconciling inertial dampeners to compensate as well as they could at full capacity. Durok sneered, knowing that the attack had been intentionally off the mark, and that while they were being hounded by their pursuers, they were also being toyed with, effectively helpless to counter the assault.

All throughout the ship at floor level, vents periodically gawped open as sensors tripped their mechanisms, and stray equipment and debris from structural damage was captured by the stow-ways, dragged out of the way by R4T units hiding in their conduits to police potentially harmful stray detritus. Around him on the bridge, various crew members had donned their station restraints, giving some stability and a moderate impression of safety as the ship jostled them around, and the captain worried for them all the same; others, unable to constrain themselves to a single operational area, were unbelted and reliant on their ‘sea legs’ to keep them from careening into consoles or other equipment as they went about their work.

“Bonn! Give me a damage report update. Lieutenant Simyarn, I could really use an effective evasive pattern if you’ve come up with anything fancy, something special, perhaps away from the anti-matter weapons?” Nearby at an unmanned science station, a lighting module overloaded, showering the area in distracting, but harmless sparks. Not for the first time, Durok lamented that the Federation’s lighting modules all reacted that way to fluctuations in power systems, at an exchange for effectively cost-free lumens, as the devices were efficient enough to be powered and controlled passively without requiring connection to energy systems of any sort, cultivating their charge from ambient energy sources. Unfortunately, those sources tended to be nearby ships systems which were connected to the grid, and tactical shifts in distribution and quick cycles of energy across different conduits and grids tended to trigger sensitive receptors in the equipment to overload. Three crewmen flinched or ducked at the sudden, distracting crackle of the bursting light, and Durok wondered if it were worth the exchange.

Lieutenant Raoul Simyarn’s hands flew across the Conn panel in a feverish dance, his eyes darting around the console to gather as much information as he could while he worked. The viewscreen, which he was ignoring, showed a pair of flanking vessels, much smaller than the Vellouwyn but significantly more maneuverable and dangerously over-armed, and as Durok watched, the closer of the pair launched another emerald-hued antimatter torpedo into their trajectory. Simyarn’s palm skidded along an edge of his console, and the whole ship veered alarmingly as lagging systems tried to catch up with the barrel roll that he set her spinning into. The torpedo cruised past the ship’s underbelly, and a subscreen on the viewer popped up to track it on one of the ventral sensor arrays. The missile came dangerously close to triggering in proximity, and Durok knew that if they wanted to, their pursuers could have remote detonated the device and crippled the ship. Instead, it twinkled off into the dark of space ahead of them for a distance before detonating into another hueless antimatter void which spun reactive forces into their wake, trigging more light units to overload and sending a menacing shudder throughout the vessel.

Junior Lieutenant Hubert Bonn grabbed the back of the captain’s chair as he lurched across the deck, thrusting a Padd with the most recent systems updates into Durok’s hands. The Tellarite looked queasy and unimpressed by their circumstances, and glared at the ships on the viewscreen. “Shields are holding at 74 percent, for now, up from the mid forties last time they pinned us down, but not quite the nineties I had them to this morning. This back and forth is overloading our emitters, and the crystal projectors won’t take the strain of it without maintenance much longer: we’ll start losing peak performance and it will slide from there. Ablative shielding is good in some places, seized in others, and gone at key points. We won’t be able to recover those without spacedock, so either way we need to report in after this. Phasers are good, but targeting is off: something they’ve got keeps us from getting a solid lock, so they are better used as sweeps, and it’s not particularly helpful if we’re not committed to the act and VERY lucky. Our rail guns are still offline because their disruptors overwhelmed their magnetic control systems, and our photon torpedoes and manual warheads will still work, if we can hit someone with them. We might be better off dropping them as dark mines, but that’s a last resort, as you know, since it’s bloody illegal.”

Durok growled. The enemy had been dogged in their pursuit of the Vellouwyn for days now, appearing and disappearing at seemingly random whims, pushing the ship off course at every encounter and herding her toward unknown goals. At their second encounter they’d decided to fight back, and while the ship’s weapons had proven capable of disabling, or at least severely deterring their pursuit, the next encounter had had more ships to worry at their heels, and the attacks began to come with more frequency. Repair crews had been unable to make meaningful work of addressing the ship’s systems, as their disruptors carried feedback signals which wreaked havoc with ships systems even as the shields dispersed them, making it dangerous to work on live grids while they were under attack. Worse still, several ship’s systems were under quarantine, as the same effect had a contagious impact on the Vellouwyn’s bio-porous network, and they had been forced to slough off several clonal nodes of insulation generation membranes, and sequester others deeper within the hull where they were less likely to suffer colony destabilization.

Bonn continued to list systems of note, cycling through the tactical, into the life support and operational management systems, stopping for a colourful epithet about the inertial dampeners as Simyarn veered to avoid another attack, and then down into the power and propulsion sets. Thorough and comprehensive while being very concise, Durok was quickly up to speed with the ship’s status, and appreciated his officer’s effectiveness in crisis. The outlook was poor, but the situation wasn’t yet over with. At the end of the report, Durok thumbed the Padd in confirmation and sent Bonn back to his stations. Jamming a black-nailed thumb on the communications panel he had queued up on his armrest, Durok barked out to one side: “Petty Officer Roundhouse, have you got a course for us? We may only have one shot at this idea of yours, we need to make it count.”

Several decks away in a lab behind the deflector and sensor arrays on the belly of the Vellouwyn, a Tiburonian crewman was busily manipulating a holographic model of their current sector of space by hand. Her brow was knit in concentration, making the severe swoop of her eyebrows into her hairline more profound. In real time, tactical data feeds to her station plotted the position of two of their pursuers, the last known trajectories of the other ships which had dogged them recently where they did not match the ship signatures of those who were currently engaged, and a number of other astronomically interesting objects in the region as reference points. A Barzan ensign, Tendan Omar, worked nearby, helping to keep the link between her simulation and the various feeder systems running at peak efficiency, while a striking Kiley, Pratt Denning, was working out formulas for a chain reaction. As Durok’s voice coughed out over a hidden speaker, she frowned and kept working. “Nearly, captain. It will work. It has to. Just be ready to vent our charged warp plasma as we skim the gas giant.”

Back on the bridge, Durok nodded, knowing the motion would not translate through the coms, and tapped the signal closed with a confirmation chime. Leveraging himself out of his chair, leaving the restraint to snake back into its concealment, he strode toward the forward operations console, bracing himself on the back of his flight controller’s seat, careful not to jostle Simyarn as he focused on flying. Tapping Junior Lieutenant Sim Wu on the shoulder encouragingly, he leaned in to review the outputs of the particle systems specialist’s weapon console, nodding at the tracing algorithms he had running on the sensor readouts. The man was smart when it came to event driven programming and had produced a spectral review of their previous engagements that was currently tracking a small spike chain in energy signatures before one of the alien ships fired an antimatter weapon. “If you see your shot, take it Mister Wu.”

The Human man nodded, and Durok looked up at the viewscreen. “Sato, Jendunn, get these bastards back up on my viewscreen. I need to see if I can’t buy us some time.” Behind him at the communications station on the upper bridge, an Aenar woman’s antennae swerved slightly, while the Trillish Human beside her cast a disapproving look of acknowledgement at the back of his head, over his partner Ensign’s shoulder. The two of them had been working at parsing the sparse communication they’d received from the enemy in the past week, or intercepted in subspace traffic, and were still trying to work out if the language was based more on a computational sequence or some biological derivative. Neither of them had made as much progress as they’d have liked, but the material was sparse, and contact more aggressive than communicative. The Sato Ear for Language was legendary in Star Fleet, literally, but the attackers barely used anything that might resemble it.

A long set of moments after his order, the viewscreen changed again; the ships previously on display collapsed into a corner, where the ventral sensor overlay had appeared for the passing torpedo, and the rest was filled with an aggressive, stark, metallic figure. Repeated analysis had told them these were not Breen; study of their language told them that, despite its sound, it was not Breen language, study of their ships and tactics, while aggressive like their Alpha Quadrant comparison, suggested they were not, in fact, Breen. The thing on screen, however, looked Breen, and had the same strange droning buzz when it vocalized, setting Durok’s hair on end. It looked Breen, with the visor hued in green, although the colour and configuration of the armour was slightly different, it was very close to Breen. Durok ran his tongue over his teeth and considered his play.

“We are of Star Fleet, from the United Federation of Planets. Likely you do not know of us yet,” he began, skipping all the pleasantries. “We tried speaking with you before, as it is the way of our coalition to entreat peacefully with new met civilizations. When that failed, we defended ourselves, and rather than engage with us, you escalated.” Still receiving no response from the unemotive entity on screen, he went on. “You have plagued us for a week, and we tire of patience. You may think you have us figured out, and that you can run us down for the kill, but I assure you that is not the case. I will give you one more warning: our ship is on a mission of peace, but our kind value our lives more than we value yours. Tell us what you want and we will consider your request. Otherwise, be on your way, or face the consequences.”

For a long moment there was nothing, and then there was a blast of garbled audio signal which made several of his crew wince before the audio filters kicked in, and dimmed the noise. Behind him, Sato’s eyes went wide, and he started tapping a new set of instructions into the computer, and the chaotic static sound played again, twice more in the background on the bridge. Durok turned around to face the communications station, and Jendunn passed her hands blindly, accurately over controls to help Sato with his effort, the two muttering back and forth for a moment, before suddenly the signal was split into a half dozen audible threads overlaying the background garble of data. A deeply artificial, almost metallic synthesized voice translated several languages simultaneously into one common message: “Run. Hide. Flee. Prey.”

Durok turned around, snarling defiantly, as the figure on screen began to convulse with a new message, which the captain did not need to have translated to know for laughter. Its face disappeared from the screen, and Wu sat up at attention as the two pursuing ships returned to take up the larger viewscreen. A moment later and with a flurry of commands, a fan of lower energy phaser spread burst from the aft canons in a colourful array, and a fraction of a moment later a green hued torpedo belched from a seamless port on the lead ship’s forward hull. As it crossed the thin phaser threshold, breaking a number of the feeble streams, Wu swiped his hands across the controls and the computer recalculated the trajectory based on emitter feedback. Suddenly the streams all converged on the antimatter weapon, linking together into a bright red point which breached the device’s hull and detonated it practically within the launch tube of the pursuing ship.

The result was instantaneously catastrophic for the alien vessel, and the implosion encompassed the entire vessel in a cascade reaction, sucking the normal matter in and annihilating it to produce a pulsar-esque compressed particle stream, ripping the vessel through an event horizon and rendering it into oblivion, before the reactive shockwave blew its remaining mass into a devastating cloud of shrapnel. The second vessel was flying close enough to get caught up in the explosion, and while it was not outright destroyed, it was disabled enough to knock it out of warp, leaving it behind on long distance sensors. A number of bridge crew cheered, save Wu, who was busily harvesting additional tactical data from the successful ploy, but most knew it was, if anything, a temporary reprieve.

“Excellent technique, Mister Wu.” Durok said, patting him on the shoulder again before returning to his chair. “Raoul, get us back on the course from Astrometrics. They’ll send more dogs to hound us before we make good on any escape, so the plan still stands. We have to reach that nebula, and the system on its edge is the perfect place to try their plan. Bonn, update the repair crews on their priorities, and take only who you need: they won’t get to finish the work in all likelihood, and the crew need rest. Take volunteers after you pick the essentials, but don’t ‘motivate’ them. Work with Chief Engineer Vantel, and check in with Shurel to see if the weapon is ready.”

The Tellarite nodded and set to his work, while Chief Conn Officer Simyarn set about coordinating course updates with the astrometrics lab. Durok decided to leave the language team to pore over their new epiphanies: he’d be briefed on their findings when they were ready, and instead stood to move to the aft turbolift corridor. “Durok to Ve Sudan;” he said, waiting for the computer to acknowledge his hail. “If you’re able, come take command of the bridge. Else send Adonnas. I’m going to check on Paine.” He commanded, knowing that the second and third shift bridge officers would be relatively fresh compared to the fourth rotation, which had retired barely two hours before, mid-battle. Some of their shift’s rotations were still on station, and he knew that, were Paine Thomas at her post, they’d have been mandatorily rotated by now, but Sudan could handle that just as well: the Betazoid Lieutenant Commander had a keen sense for fatigue among the crew, and knew when they were reaching, rather than riding, their limits. He got a simple ‘Affirmative’ from her, and stepped off the bridge with a last look at the ant hill of its crew compliment, smiling with concern before turning left to his preferred turbolift station, which had been prioritized for command needs in a crisis.

“Sick bay ICU,” he instructed as he stepped into the dimly lit can, feeling the throb of fatigue budding behind his eyes as he braced for what he always considered to be an awkward period of contemplation as the lift shuttled through maglev tunnels between bulkheads. He dreaded what he’d find when he arrived at his destination: Paine was his first officer, and in the year that they’d served together thus far, he’d come to respect and rely on her. She was as true and stalwart a warrior as he had ever encountered, at any time, anywhere, so to see her laid low by the disruptor infection which had impacted the crew stationed in the aft deuterium storage bays when the first attack had taken them unprepared was a demoralizing sensation. Many of the others had been treated and were recovering, as the Vellouwyn’s medical team was among the most brilliant he’d ever seen, but three of his crew were still unconscious and in various states of suffering, with Paine being by far the most overwhelmed.

Before he returned to his rotation, perhaps to get some rest, but more likely to revisit the plan with his strategic teams before they reached their next destination, he would spend some time at their sides, speaking quietly of what he knew of them, what was important to them, their motivation and inspirations. He did not know, and nor did Chief Medical Officer Barr, whether they could hear him or not, but he felt that if anything would motivate them to stave off death, it was the things of value found in their lives. It was the least he could do to remind them of their worth.

And now...

[etymologyofmind]

The Romantic Targ

Kanar was a peculiar drink, in that its methods of brewing changed depending on when and where in Cardassian space the vintage had been pursued. A storied beverage, it was as old as Cardassian culture, on record predating The First Hebitian civilization, with undrinkable urns of the stuff cached in their burial vaults before their plunder. To an outsider, the drink could be unpalatable without developing a taste, as most brews were thick and coarse with the silty yeast which gave it its pedigree. Depending on the colony which sourced the yeast, as well as various adulterated versions of the recipe, Kanar could be anything from brown to green to blue with some success, though in the end a true Kanar would be dark, bitter, and harsh, much like the Cardassians who brew it.

A young Kanar, though light and clear, had a layer of the sediment at the bottom and a bitter aftertaste, with little alcoholic maturity. However, with years of appropriate care and feeding, Kanar would ferment through stages of potence, becoming almost like a batter before the process reached a tipping point where the yeast’s own waste became too toxic for it to reproduce, and the drink broke down into a darker, less viscous concoction which could set most species back on their heels with barely a taste. Often imitated, occasionally replicated, it was impossible to reproduce the elegance of a true Kanar with a simulation, and watering it down or marrying brews would sour the substance as fast as leaving it open in the sun. One simply could not rush perfection.

One could drink imperfection with great ease, however, and if not enjoy the process, at least get passably drunk as a consolation. On the Erebus 3 Commercial Helix of the Foothold cluster, knockoff Kanar was one of the easiest, and cheapest, things to drink. E3CH wasn’t one of the fancy stations with things like docking bays or defensive shields or consistent atmospheric scrubbers, it was what the locals called a Dive Hive, where the rougher quantities among the hired help went to take a load off, tie a load on, bury their bad memories in vices, and make some new bad memories with vices. The lights were low and frequently broken, the corridors were about as safe as one might expect from a society of pirates, thugs, and lowlife smugglers. It smelled. But if you wanted to be left alone, be it to make bad money or spend it, E3CH was one of the many places to be.

Nestled under a cooling junction which dripped dirty condensation in a steady stream near the arch that passed for a door, someone had bolted a number of shipping crates to the floor to create a makeshift bar in front of a storage crawlspace, and hung a sign nearby proclaiming it to be “The Romantic Targ”. The space was filled with a dozen or so patrons, all looking equally and totally unapproachable, with bloodshot eyes and stained clothing and weapons worn openly, glaring at anyone who got close. Some leaned on the bar, a couple had set up a game of cards on a broken med bed, and others perched on available spaces here and there, watching keenly and drinking sullenly.

Near one of the corners, neither too close nor too far from the exits, a solitary Cardassian man sat drinking a ‘house’ Kanar, brewed right here on the station, probably behind the bar itself. It was coarse, it was gritty, it was dank, and it was vile, but the Kanar was alright in spite of the dive that sold it, and a reasonably thorough tricorder scan showed it wasn’t overly contaminated. There was no table where he sat, simply a low shelf where one might rest an arm and a drink, and another, lower shelf which served as bench seating along the wall; it would not be comfortable, but it would not be wise to get too comfortable in a place like this.

A number of heads popped up to look when two new figures entered the space which qualified as belonging to the ‘Targ, with about half of them going back to their business, save for the occasional, furtive, confirming glance. The rest simply stared, undaunted. One of them was very tall for a Human, let alone a woman, and she had the look of a veteran brawler: her hair was a shock of ice white, shaved on all sides but the top, and styled in a stark slant to one side of her head. Her blue eyes were cold and seemed to take in everything without having to rush the process, and she moved with an easy confidence which commanded attention rather than drawing interest, suggesting she knew what the place could put up and was not concerned, rather than not prepared. Beside her, a smaller figure with a bigger head, an Andorian man with a tight lipped, aristocratic look on his face. His blue antennae barely bobbed under the gunmetal grey hair on his head as he glanced about the room, a sure sign of his own confidence and self assurance.

Both were armed: the Human with a great monster of a sword slung over her shoulder and mounted on a magnetic harness, and the Andorian with a pair of ice blades slung at his hips in easy reach. The Human also had a strange gauntlet on one arm, matte black and decorated with orange-gold studs and reflective crystal faces, and a black conduit cable running from the elbow which coiled its way up her arm into a box mounted on one of her shoulders, looking very suspiciously Borg. Each also had a phaser of unfamiliar configuration, but that wasn’t as surprising in this part of space, where the cultural mosaic was still finding new patches every other day. Both wore uniforms, although they weren’t advertising anyone or anything in particular: matching grey and black, well fit fatigues, low profile harnesses with light armour plating to cover some vitals, and banded sashes which ran across the chest, down to the waist, in a corded braid with colour patterns which seemed to hold some meaning. They could be mercenaries, or private security, or paramilitary of some other sort, but compared to the rest of the E3CH denizens, they were well disciplined, and, importantly, clean.

The Andorian led the pair straight to the Cardassian man, stopping a couple of meters away, close enough to be conversational and, courteously, not cutting off any exits. The blue-hued man tapped gloved fingers on a padd he’d held tucked under his arm until now, which chirped in a way that insisted irritatingly that the user had turned the system sounds -up-, rather than muting them like every other sentient in the galaxy. He looked at the screen, squinted for a moment, holding the padd out at a distance as though adjusting for near-sightedness, then smiled with tight lipped confidence, turning raw-cobalt-coloured eyes to look at the Cardassian directly. His partner turned her back to them, squaring her shoulders, observing the room in a steady, no-nonsense glare.

As Cardassians went, the man was uncommon: there -were- civilians—laborers, merchants, non-combatants—who frequented this area of space, but they weren’t usual, and even those who made appearances usually wore the off-duty armour favoured by the Cardassian military, and entitled to any who had completed their mandatory military service; those who had not completed said service were less common here than a laughing Vulcan, as the Cardassian military found that to be an execution offense. For a Cardassian civilian to be out of uniform was a beguiling sight, as it set them apart from their racial kin more effectively than one might expect.

This one was dressed in slacks and a simple fabric shirt of some coarse woven material which looked comfortable, airy, and absolutely out of place on a Cardassian body, following none of the rules of sharp lines, accentuated collars, and stiff fabric which even the least conservative of their species favoured. Under the open-collared shirt, which had been undone to a number of buttons, a gold ring on a chain could be seen laying against scaled skin, and the cords of muscle which ran down from his neck bulged out almost obscenely along his upper back, distending the shirt curiously: it had not been made for him, and it showed. Yet, somehow, the way he wore it had a casual, careless charm, which was complimented by the long braid of hair which slung over one of his shoulders, would have made it all seem poetic, if he weren’t actually filthy. The shirt had probably been white, or close to it at some point, but without significant intervention would never be anything of the sort again, and the pants were soaked in something that didn’t show on the dark fabric, but smelled badly enough to orient attention. He has grime in the creases between the scales of his skin, machine oil perhaps, and the fact that his hair was actually clean for all this stood out in its luster and shine.

Without saying anything, the Andorian held up the padd inquisitively, waiting for a long moment before the Cardassian sighed and nodded, holding his hand out with an impatient gesture. The device was easily tossed, and easily caught, and the seated man took a drink of his Kanar as he glanced over the screen. At first, he looked bored, eyes dull, tired even, and filled with disdain, but after a moment of reading, he began to swipe through displays of undisclosed content, sitting up more attentively and focusing with sudden ease. Almost as if catching himself, he halted mid swipe, and scrolled down through whatever was onscreen for a moment, and then his face folded back into a guarded, sullen contempt. “And just what is all this meant to be?” he asked, anger tinging the question.

The Andorian shrugged amicably, as if dismissing the importance of the information. A few other patrons around the room were taking note of them, but the presence of the large Human woman seemed to deter further inquiry. “You might consider it a job offer, Mister Aran. As we understand it, you are looking for something, and we may be in a position to help you find it. We are also looking for something, and feel that you may be in the position to help us. The details, however,” he said, his entire candor pitched expertly such that only the pair would be able to clearly make out what had been spoken, “may be best discussed somewhere less avaricious, wouldn’t you say?”

Nearby, at the med bed, the game was standing still. The players were talking, but no bets, nor cards, were crossing the mat. There was a Nausican trio sitting near the bar against another wall who seemed to be sizing the Human up on grounds of challenge rating, and the barkeep was carefully collecting anything in reach on the counter tops, whether it belonged to him or not. None of them were making an overt scene of things, but there was clearly something going on between the newcomers and the former Cardassian Glinn, Ranoch Aran, who had once been known for his expertise as a manhunter and an investigator of the likes with whom he now kept company during the occupation. Now, a pair of toughs who were increasingly likely to be feds were minding their own business with him, which spelled trouble in the kind of place which minded everyone else’s. Slowly, Ranoch nodded, and cast his voice low. “Seeing as you’ve put me in a bit of trouble just asking, I’ll tell you what. You get us out of here without making it look like a sting, and I’ll talk to you about whatever comes to mind. What do you say?”

The Andorian sighed, making an exaggerated gesture of looking at his feet, tucking a hand under one elbow, and touching the tips of his fingers to his brow as if in disbelief. “Mister Aran,” he said, louder this time, his voice thick with subtle malice. “I don’t think you understand what we’re doing here. Our boss is looking for his daughter, and the foolish boy who thought he could get away from us just by running to the other end of the galaxy. When I said we were here for your help, it wasn’t that we were here asking for your help.”

Aran’s brow’s knit momentarily, and then shot up as the blue man leapt at him, aiming a sharp jab under his drooping left arm. The air erupted from Ranoch’s lungs, and he responded by dropping a hard elbow down onto the Andorian’s arm as it pulled away, likely bruising his bicep in the process. The half-full cup of Kanar followed, spattering across the Andorian’s face, but missing his eyes as the man deftly blocked the line of his vision and caught the cup square in his palm, returning it with a swift strike to the side of Ranoch’s head. Slightly dazed, but surprisingly unharmed, the Cardassian looked up at the Andorian in a rage, only to find the man smiling subtly, with a finger laid across his lips in a bid to keep the secret.

Behind the Andorian, the Human woman reached behind her and grasped the hilt of the blade on her back, and there was a scraping sound as she pulled it away from the magnetic lock which held it against her spine. It came around easily, and she assumed a stance with it which thrust the blade out in front of her, balancing her weight on one bent knee as the other stayed posed to launch her weight forward. Twisting the grip, there was another buzzing hum and a snap as a repulsion field leapt up over the length of the weapon, dulling its edge, but giving it a nasty bite.

In response to her sudden move, the Nausicans came to their feet, their leader charging headlong at her with his own shorter blade in hand. Before he could get close, the Human drew back into a lower crouch, swinging the blade away from the attacker as she did, wheeling entirely around with the weight of the blade before she threw herself into the momentum of its bulk in order to swing it back like a giant bat. It moved faster than it should have in her powerful grip, swatting the oncoming Nausican aside with a flash as the repulsor connected heavily with his ribs and extended the force of her momentum. The sound he made in response was equal parts pained and comical as he was swept off his feet to sail across the room, bouncing hard off of a shipping container. Completing her turn, the Human regained her footing, then drew back to launch another attack, lancing forward with the weapon and using its superior reach and her streamlined profile to barrel into the next Nausican point first, driving him back into the group around the med bed, sending credit chips and cards flying in all directions.

The move literally turned the table, and as the med bed sprawled across the floor, everyone in the ‘Targ came up ready for a fight. With two of his partners strewn around the room, the third Nausican fell back out of range of the massive sword, while a number of the others who littered the room scattered out the doors. The cadre which had been playing cards regrouped, coming up with clubs and fist weapons, forming a half circle around the giant Human to try and corner her, nipping at her like a pack of jackals. She changed her grip on the giant sword, setting it at an angle that let her shift it around her like a shield, parrying and blocking the jabs and swings they made and getting into a rhythm, until she intentionally let one of them slip past her guard on one of his lunges, leaving the much smaller Bajoran woman surprised and off balance. The Human planted a giant, booted foot on the small woman's hip as they passed, and sent her flying into one of her other companions with a kick that gave the bigger woman enough direction to bring the sword overhead into a downward cleave that caught a third full across the chest, sending them careening into a cargo crate behind him, knocking its mooring free and tumbling him back behind the bar.

The last of the pack took advantage of the opportunity, rushing in under her guard with a swing which sent his benign little club skidding off of her armoured shoulder, but allowing him to quickly grab the phaser from the holster at her side and tumble out of her reach. She seemed surprised at the deftness of the act, and faced him head on, the blade held up defensively between them as he pointed the weapon at her triumphantly, pulling the trigger with a malicious sneer. The weapon surged blue, its capacitors lunging to the task, and the safety kicked in almost instantly, discharging the energy bolt back through the grip on the weapon when it did not detect the component in her glove which authorized the use of the weapon. Biofeedback energy enough to stun lanced up the thug’s arm, making him gurgle audibly as it set his foul hair on end, before dropping him to the ground with a faint plume of smoke.

The Human straightened, and moved to collect the weapon, when her Andorian companion called a number out from behind. Instantly she wheeled towards the door to one side, jamming the tip of her sword against the floor and kneeling behind it. She clamped the gauntleted fist overtop of the hilt, gripping its pommel, and there was a high-pitched whine for a moment before the repulsor field on the weapon surged. Just in time, the field deformed from around the blade, spreading out to envelope a wedge around her and providing cover as the power cell on her shoulder fed energy into the projector on the weapon, overcharging it. Disruptor fire from two of the Nausicans, now recovered, pelted her position, searing the deck plating, scoring the walls and bulkheads behind, and dissipating against her forcefield as she bunkered behind the weapon. She knew the weapons they used, and knew they would not hold out indefinitely, but neither would her defense, and she called out to them in a language that the translators picked up strangely, giving it an odd, arcane accent with a lyrical, dissonant effect:

“If you drain this shield,” she said, no hint of concern in her voice, “there’ll be nothing to protect you from the blade. Fair warning.”

The disruptor fire continued for a moment, but then began to thin out as either the weapons began to drain, or the attackers reconsidered their position. She was about to stand and engage them again, when someone shouted behind her. Before she could react, some sort of mining tool flew out from behind the bar where someone had hidden from her, and struck the box on her back shoulder. There was a sound like a pop, followed by a whine so high pitched that those with more sensitive hearing on the deck, even beyond the bar, fell grasping at their ears, and a surge of power ran into the gauntlet on her arm, and through it to the shield emitter. A moment later the emitter pulsed, sending a wall of force in all directions from the Human’s position, knocking people from their feet and pushing anything not bolted down across the deck, before burning out the power systems and lighting on fire.

Ranoch was one of the first to recover, though his nose was bloodied by the wall of force. Turning back to see how the woman was doing, he was surprised to see her casually stand up from the middle of her scorched epicenter, and casually reach the gauntleted hand across to pluck the power pack from her shoulder, heedless of the flames climbing from it, and tossing it carelessly to one side to smoulder. She rolled her shoulder, which itself crackled from a plasma burn that had eaten through some of her armour and cooked a bit of her flesh, but did not wince as she tested it out, only frowned a look of disappointment. Then, she gripped her giant fuckoff sword again, swinging it around her in a flourish to test her range. The repulsor unit was burnt out, and it trailed a dim afterglow where the power systems inside of it were still melting, and as she flailed the weapon expertly around her body, it tore long trails of razor-sharp nothing behind it, not visibly slowing as she shredded long gouges in the deck and a metal bulkhead above her, before forcibly swinging it down to embed half way through a vacuum grade shipping crate where it came to rest. She punched her gloved hand into the palm of the gauntlet and cracked her knuckles audibly, looking less than impressed at the Nausicans who were now sitting up from where they’d been knocked aside.

“As I was saying.”

From there, the room cleared very quickly. Some dragged less-mobile companions with them out their doors and boltholes, and the vault door behind the bar which secured the storage space thunked close with a manual lock. The Andorian, unfazed, stepped up to pick up her dropped phaser, and said something too quiet for anyone to hear, to which she nodded slowly, never taking her eyes off of anyone who wasn’t actively fleeing, something that quickly left her with no one worth watching. Satisfied that the events were concluded, and inclined to get away before more formal investigation arrived, she grabbed the sword hilt with her good arm, and tore it free with a grunt of effort. The Andorian returned to Ranoch, offering a hand to help him to his feet.

“I don’t know if that satisfies your requirements, Mister Aran, but if you would care to join us anyhow, we would be most grateful to share our proposal with you. Ms. Thomas could do with some medical attention, so I feel it would be best to entertain you aboard our vessel. I trust you won’t mind a nice bath and a hot meal for the trouble.” he said, leaving Ranoch unsure entirely whether it was a request, or if the man had been honest when he’d said they weren’t actually asking for the help they’d come to him for. He swallowed a surprising lump in his throat, then grinned in unexpected delight at the most recent turn of events.

“I saw your star fleet markers on the padd, Andorian: I have to admit I didn’t expect anything so interesting from the Federation. I’ll bite. Take me to your leader.” Answered the Cardassian, getting to his feet and following the pair out into the corridor beyond the bar. There would be some sort of shuttle waiting for them at the dockyards, as there really wasn’t any better way on or off of E3CH without pissing off the local enforcement, who took to transporter use worse than they took to disruptor fire truth be told: it was hard to destroy enough merchandise with a disruptor to really matter, but you could steal a whole lot with a transporter, so generally they wrapped much of the stations they ran with dispersion fields.

As they made their way dockside, avoiding the response teams who were making their way towards the ‘Targ too late to respond to the brawl, Ranoch considered what else he’d seen on the padd: it had been a passenger manifest of some sort, although none of its members had a particularly savoury look about them. When he’d finally gotten to the record that stopped him, he was sure that what he’d been shown was almost guaranteed to be a prison transfer order; the creature whose record he’d gleaned had served above him in the military, and had been renowned for his atrocities to his victims in the ground conflicts leading up to, and even during the Dominion war. Ranoch was sure that his surrender for indictment would have been part of the terms of peace at the end of the conflict. But if they were looking for him…

A cold stone which usually sat in the pit of his stomach warmed uncomfortably as he considered the possibility. He had been someone else during the occupation, someone he’d been made to be, someone he’d been trained to be, someone he was good at being, but not someone, in the end, he had wanted to be. His mind was quick, as were his wits, and his ability to track, project, and hunt his prey had been noticed by command, such that he was refined for the skills it took to seek out who they sought. It had taken him a long time to realize that not everyone who was branded an enemy to Cardassia was any more than an enemy to some Cardassians, and the revelation had soured his relationship with the entirety of his mother culture, leaving him formally on the outs with his past, and officially missing in action, to be considered KIA if he ever found himself in the wrong part of Cardassian space. Proactively, of course.

But if the other names on this list were like the one that he’d recognized… perhaps there might be some redemption to be had for a life ill-used. And as Ranoch watched blood trickle from the stoic giantess’s plasma burn while she led him to the relative safety of their transport, he wondered if there might be something else to learn from just whoever it was that he found himself falling in with.

And that gave him cause to smile.

[etymologyofmind]

What happens on the Holodeck...

Previously...

And now...

When class ended, Da’an called for the lobby, and set back in his seat in the now ‘empty’ room, pressing his palms into his eyes. Doctor Asimov was an interesting choice as an instructor, though the many liberties the program writer had taken with him, and general reality, weren’t going to be to everyone’s taste, and it was likely the original man himself would have had reservations about being pulled into a simulation like this and used as such a strange avatar. Federation law was constantly changing around holotechnology, and the laws about image rights were more forgiving with the dead than with the living, and if one knew where, and how, to look, there were always tells with holograms.

Unfortunately for Da’an, it was also a technology which, despite its progress and general balance improving by leaps and bounds, was not perfectly suitable to everyone: many species did not see the world the same way, be it in colour or tone or depth perception, and the way a hologram portrayed reality to accommodate those differences had led to some impressive innovations in personalized experiences. The Vellouwyn itself had a highly experimental, highly versatile holographic system onboard, tied directly into the main computer and a powerful auxiliary power system, to allow it to do some “Neat Things” and gather data about the results. One of these things happened to give Da’an a mild stress headache if he participated too long in any given program.

Pulling up the system control console for the holosuites, Da’an toggled some settings and looked around the lobby. Abruptly, the generally grey cube of space his seat had been settled in faded out, displaying something closer to an astronav interface, where different points of reference data were shown in real time and three dimensions using glyphs and identifying data. The walls of the massive chamber were rendered in the standard black and yellow grid, although it flickered subtly, as if the lines were made of artificial energy. They were, actually, as the emitter grids embedded into the chamber walls did not require the reference mesh earlier holodecks had relied on, but it was a legacy representation that many users had grown comfortable with. There were a few projections into the room at regular intervals, extending from the walls to a central support column which hosted the internal emitters, the core replication node, and the redundant auxiliary power system. All of the substance of the holo systems was projected from here, and the deuterium powered emitters could project up to level 10 forcefields at such a refined focus that a skilled surgeon could perform nanosurgery with simulated equipment here.

The rest of the constellation around the room represented two things, based on Da’an’s filter settings: tangible, thus, replicated objects (or those which had been brought in by a participant), and participants themselves. These glittered like stars in the open field, drifting amorphously in a general suspension around the room, keeping mathematically distant to, and from, the relative ‘owner’ of the space. Looking down and around himself, Da’an noticed his chair was the same one he’d been sitting in in the classroom, but was now translucent, while the Padd in his hands was fully real, as it had come in with him. He was slowly drifting towards the wall, and one of the gaps in the grid which represented an exit, as the call for the lobby had presumed that he would want to exit the suites when he was done with his program, so was locating him near the Arch. He did not even feel the movement, and neither did the others still in the suites around him.

The Bolian from his classroom looked to be striding straight towards Da’an, so he stood up from the chair, feet planted on the translucent ‘floor’ which spread out around him like a pool in the nothing. He prepared to be greeted by the boisterous prankster, but was surprised for a moment when he passed within two meters of Da’an without saying anything, or even seeming to notice him: this was, in fact, the case, as unlike Da’an, the Bolian didn’t have a console up, and so couldn’t see beyond his own private experience. As the blue-hued alien moved, his path veered slightly around Da’an as the suites corrected it to keep the two from coming into contact, and ultimately corrected to pass him through the Arch unimpeded. Da’an realized that in his own personal experience, the Bolian hadn’t noticed the deviation, and had been walking ‘in a straight line’ for the exit the entire time, goaded by the deceptive projection of the simulated room he was in.

Da’an’s cybernetic implants had trouble with that very effect. Unlike most of the other crew, for whom the holodeck could bend light and alter reference points to make a straight line into a circle if it was called for, the various sensors in his equipment fed him dissonance reports whenever the holodeck messed too hard with plausibility. Occasionally it made him feel woozy, because it wasn’t simply a digital readout on his retinal console, but the full-featured experience of vertigo as his eyes and brain told him he was moving in different directions. Occasionally the visual input of the projected fields would distort between his eyes and brain, too, and his personalized view card—the projected envelope around him which gave him an arm’s reach reality to work in, simulated to his anchored presence—could occasionally desynchronize, making reality seem flat and queasily depthless. This was one of the reasons that Rich Ironside had given him access to this console at all; the two of them were working on a research thesis around Da’an’s holosuite experiences, and the merits and flaws of its discomforts.

Resuming his look around the space, Da’an noted a number of other students from his class still floating about, seated, working on Padds to make new selections for a program. Others had risen, and like the Bolian, were filtered into a ‘corridor’ queue which allowed them to file out of the suite simultaneously through one of multiple exits without actually running in to one another. One person, above him, was walking at a forty-degree angle, perfectly upright and at a slant, suggesting that they had a personalized gravity field working in their experience such that ‘down’ wasn’t the same as it was for others around them, possibly because they’d requested an upper-level Arch to exit. Since the gravity itself was artificial for everyone aboard, this wasn’t actually as complicated as it seemed, and directionality was the province of one of the arrays which connected between the walls and the core in the room for just this reason.

Some of the people and objects Da’an could see were clear enough: a Tarkalean Lieutenant he’d met once was dining with a friend somewhere, on something that he could not see through the opaque plate from underneath: the food had been replicated as part of their experience, so it would be nutritious and as real as such things came. Tactful Shadows—an actual program in the system called Tactful Shadows—were overlaid on his display to keep the participants from being exposed to unsolicited voyeurism from this angle, but the privacy settings of their program still let him see who they were and an approximation of what they were doing. Meanwhile, a short way off, a targeting icon surrounded a sphere of amorphous static, and its only listing was the currently running program: this was a user who had arranged for higher privacy settings, or whose program came with those settings flagged by default, to keep out unwanted attention even under diagnostic conditions. Nearby to that was a Human woman who was engaged in ice climbing, a fact which was made apparent by the motions she went through and the wicked hooks she was hatcheting into nothingness as she interacted with her program.

All of these participants floated in a void they did not know, or at least, did not have to acknowledge, kept them drifting around a big empty room that made adjustments to keep them from ever meeting, ever having to overhear one another, ever even knowing whether they were up or down. Rich called this a “Suspension of Disbelief”; Da’an wished it was more unbelievable to his implants. With a sigh, he looked back down at the Padd and touched the hematite tips of his fingers to the surface, letting his accessibility program sync with the small computer in the little device. It connected almost instantly, and as he thought through what he wanted to say and do, the Padd reacted to the microstatic instructions that channelled through his artificial touch, working faster than most people would through simple tactile inputs, one of the perks of not being a whole person.

When he was young, Da’an had been on a colony which had fallen victim to a spaceborne bacterial cloud which engulphed the whole planet. Like invisible locusts, the ugly little creatures, which resembled earth Waterbears, but had a taste for flesh, had ravaged their crops and livestock, contaminated their water supply, and within a week decimated their settlements. Few people from the Coriander Settlement had survived long enough for rescue, but when the Vulcan science ship had reached them and driven off the infection, Da’an was one of three of his family members who were still alive, huddled in a sealed storage bin, sharing a dwindling supply of oxygen and hoping to outlast the small contagion which had made its way in on their clothes and was slowly, but surely, eating its way through the available meal. He had lost an eye, his tongue, suffered massive nerve damage throughout his upper body, and had been spared from death only by the apparent aversion of the bacteria to eating through bones. He, his sister, and his cousin were treated well, and extensively, by a multi-member coalition of Federation doctors and scientists who were using newly developed advancement in cybernetic medicine to help the children and the few other survivors of the colony to recover meaningfully, and regain quality of life.

It had not only saved his life, but launched his career: Da’an was the Vellouwyn’s Bio-Integrated Systems Specialist, and he was responsible, in part, for everything from the gel packs which ran a neural network throughout the ship, to the healing biofilm which helped the outer hull recover and endure the natural rigors of space, to the interface with the next generation DOT units and the R4T drones which helped maintain ship systems. He had taken advantage of his unprecedented access to the doctors and specialists who helped him heal, and had become one of them on his own terms. For now, he was working with Rich, who was the holographic systems specialist, and an un-enlisted crewman, to try to better understand what the Vellouwyn’s holosuites were capable of, and ways to ensure that they would stay safe and accessible to everyone.

Finished with his work, he kicked the leg of the holographic chair away, and it burst into motes of light, dissipating when it got out of his circle of reference. Curious, he dialed some of the settings on his Padd, such that the visual representation of the chair came back into focus, tipped over on the floor nearby as the auditorium came back into view for him, empty and dimly lit. He stepped towards it, and watched as a thin blue light crept up over it as he got close enough for it to be interactable, and smiled at the recognition that the suite was not wasting power to physically present objects that he was not likely to interact with.

Satisfied for the moment, he turned to leave through the auditorium doors, which had rendered to reflect the exit of the Arch, and found himself face to ‘face’ with someone in the shadows, lurking, formless, with deep-set eyes watching him. Startled and surprised, Da’an cried out, throwing his Padd at the figure, and stumbling backward a number of steps, only to trip over his discarded chair and land heavily on his back. It didn’t hurt, as the safeties for the suites were on, but he clambered anyway, struggling to kick the chair away and get to his feet, only to find himself alone in the darkened auditorium. His heart was racing, and he was breathing raggedly, and he spun in a circle to look in all directions for whatever it was he’d seen, but found nothing.

Da’an wasn’t satisfied with that. “Computer, End program: immediate arch. Wait, cancel! Suspend program, record state for past 5 minutes, and isolate with level four data quarantine for review, authorization Darrin Theta Five Five. Arch!” The computer chirped and the door flashed open behind him. He briefly considered backing out defensively, but fear got the better of him and he turned and ran. Nothing happened, nothing pursued him, until he got to the door, whereupon a polite sound charmed from behind him. He threw himself out into the hall to a skidding halt: by design, for safety and security, the decks around the holosuites had no emitters on them, lessening the risk of escaped problems, so nothing was prone to following him. Nevertheless, he peered back into the nothing cautiously as the one or two other people lingering in the hallways looked on in bemusement. Floating there near the door was his Padd.

A pleasant voice chimed from the side of the arch, from a console: “Please take all personal articles when leaving the holosuites. Lost or forgotten articles can be reclaimed on deck 8: Requisitions.”

Da’an could feel his face flush with embarrassment, and he reached a trembling, traitorous hand through the door to snatch the Padd out of thin air. Turning to march indignantly down the hallway, he barked out a demand to the computer for the location of Richard Ironside, who he could practically hear laughing from here, satisfied in his successful prank. It was a good thing they had such qualified doctors onboard, Da’an thought: when he caught up with Rich, he was going to tear a strip off of him deep enough to need medical attention.

[etymologyofmind]

The Laws of Sandwich-making

The sun shone through large windows that dominated walls on two sides of the lecture hall, lighting the space with a pleasant natural ambiance. The windows themselves were opaque, probably once painted, long ago, but long since grown over with some sort of benign bio-film which had co-opted the smooth habitat of the glass as an optimal place to breed without having to set down roots. Around a dais set at the lower front of the room, rows of stadium seating swathed an arc away from the instructional stage, which itself was dominated by an ancient chalk board. This spanned the whole wall behind the stage at two stories height, sporting a wheeled ladder to reach various quarters when whoever held the chalk needed to make adjustments.

Scrawled over the dark slate were innumerable formulae and sygaldry, some related to one another, but many simply independent expressions of knowledge in a handful of notations and languages recognized by modern science. Tucked into a corner between a sublight inertia equation and a calculation for dilithium intermix ratios for the regenerative cycle at various draw factors was a short Klingon epithet about reproduction, and a forked, phallic device. Of course. The board was, like much of the room, a projection, and its contents were collections of real work which had been performed in this teaching center, and a creative selection by whomever had designed this holoprogram to begin with. At need, the board, the stage, and the stadium could all be replaced by the whims of the program users, and Da’an had decided that this familiar space was what he needed for his downtime shift.

Standing in the center of the stage at a wide desk, studded with gas valves and sinks and various other archaic scientific equipment, a man with thick rimmed, dark glasses was making a sandwich. His lab coat was not exactly pristine, but was still serviceable, and under it he wore a charming, well tailored suit; at his throat, a rose hued broach made of polished dilithium crystal trailed two tassels. Perhaps the most striking feature of the man was that, despite being smoothly bare faced with respect to a beard or moustache, his silver hair flared wildly like a frozen flame, and his face was flanked by the plumes of his spectacular mutton chops. With the exception of those who felt that ‘all humans look the same’, anyone who saw this man out in the world could not fail to recognize his unique ensembled self, which was a talent that many masters of the pedagogical arts had seemed to affect.

As his hands skillfully plied knives and spoons into various condiments, spreading butter over bread, mustard on cheese, and pesto on ham, Isaac Asimov addressed the classroom with a clear, comfortable voice.

“Holo technology has really come a long way since its introduction to Star Fleet. While obviously not the first to adopt the technology, the Federation has seemed keener than almost any other coalition state to integrate holography into their work, their leisure, and into scientific pursuits.” Onto the bread, the cheese, onto the cheese, the ham. Da’an wondered why this particular behaviour was part of the program, and realized he enjoyed the charm.

“The Romulan Empire, ever phobic of artificial life or facsimiles, disdains holographic technologies as deceitful and dangerous, and actively sets about producing counter-technologies to disrupt it wherever presented, while the Klingons find the hollowness of photonic experiences to be ‘demeaning and without honour’, whether they be for combat or any other reason.” He shakes droplets of water off of the romaine lettuce before laying it onto the sandwich, and pulls a fresh tomato out of a lexan usually used for bathing solution jars. Rinsing it under the tap, he begins to pare away the stem, and cut it into thin slices.

“Meanwhile, the Cardassians simply lacked exposure to the technology, as their sectors of space have had fewer innovations in the field, and a shortage of legacy technologies left over from the previous fallen empires that seem to litter the galaxy from which to glean the secrets of realized photons. They simply haven’t had either the appetite or the insight to develop it, but they seem keen and curious of others’ forays into the field.” Tomatoes on the sandwich are followed by a pinch of salt and a crack of pepper from a device Da’an had mistaken for a cudgel of some sort. He found his mouth watering, even as he listened to the words, and thought about the last time he’d have had an actual sandwich made for him by hand: probably not since his mother’s house, before leaving for the academy.

“As for the rest of the independents of the Southern Galaxy, which is to say, the Alpha and Beta quadrants, without the support of a broader resource base, and subject to far more of the effects of capitalism and trade markets than some of the larger empires, these mostly use holography for cheap tricks and thrills, with little profit in maturing the applications of the work.” The second slice of bread on top of the sandwich, making it whole now, and Asimov picks it up off of the cutting board to gesture with single handed.

“Which is to say that while not alone in the field of holographic development, the Federation is making more significant advances than many of it unaffiliated neighbors outside of the Northern Galaxy, where information from the Voyager expedition have taught us that there continue to be significant mysteries left to explore in this field of science.” Da’an sits forward in his seat as the iconic man on stage lifts the sandwich to his face, only to find himself suddenly frustrated as he simply inhales its aroma before setting it back on the cutting board. Da’an’s face pinches up and he finds himself surprised to be sulking about the lack of proxy satisfaction as the sandwich sits, uneaten, wasting its potential on the counter.

“Among the many advances in the technology in the past fifty years is the parallel development of both transporter and replicator technology which have, it turns out, significant parallel and overlap with holography if enough detail is applied to the pursuit.” He moves to one end of the bench, turning the knob on one of the gas valves, which for no good reason begins to project a holographic image of a cartoonish blue hedgehog, causing Da’an’s eyebrow to quirk up. Asimov continues with his lesson as he walks to the other end of the bench, setting a hand on a similar gas valve.

“While transportation of a purely photonic hologram continues to be ill conceived, as the matrix required to hold photonic representations together don’t follow the matter stream, it is a simpler, less expensive matter to transport a holo projector to a location to establish the eidolons desired on location. Transportation between two emitters becomes a data transfer problem rather than a matter transfer problem, for which there are significantly more powerful, less expensive solutions.”

Idly, as the professor spoke, Da'an looked the word 'eidolon' up on his pad, noting that it seeemd several others nearby were doing the same.

To make his point, Asimov presses a button on a clicker in his hand, which causes a transporter effect to envelope the blue character, dissolving it in the standard way, only to have it dissipate in a colourful splay of light at the destination point in front of the instructor. Turning on the gas valve next, however, the cartoonish figure re-emerges with a splash of golden rings, which it proceeds to zip about collecting, before dashing from one pedestal to the other across a black hose laid over the bench, conveniently marked with a small placard labeled ‘data conduit’. Around him in the room, several of the other students break into low laughter, and Isaac Asimov smiles patiently as he waits for it to die down.

“The problem with holography, and indeed, the underlying problem with data-based technology, data-based -life-, is that it is more sensitive to the hardships and ravages of our reality than the more conventional forms. That is, of course, unless you consider conventional life to be data-based, which is a matter for another course in philosophy.” This, he emphasized with a brief robotic pantomime, jerkily moving his arms around and pivoting at the waist before ‘de-powering’ and going limp. Again, a chuckle from the gallery, before he continued.

“Conventional life stores its data in conventional matter: protein chains, sugars, syrups of blood and grease and fat which lubricate and facilitate and protect the sensitivities of organic chemistry from the savagery of a physical reality. In the fields of robotics and anthropomorphic neurology, as you’d find with Soong, Arretan, or Harcourt-class androids, data is stored in physical emulations of these compounds, in one way or another, keeping patterns of programming in replicable arrays within cell structures such that their bodies may theoretically heal, reproduce, and potentially even be cloned in sufficiently advanced circumstances. These technologies are rooted in the physicality of the universe, and, while delicate, are still subject to its rules.”

While speaking, the holographic Asimov picks a number of components from the bench, setting them up with remarkably competent pacing considering the nature of his speech. A clamp stand tripod is set up, barely a piece of rebar on stilts, to which he affixes a light within a broad silver enclosure that resembles a mixing bowl. Flicking the switch, he finds the light dim and ineffective, and so slides the casing off of an enclosure on its back, and pulls out a spent battery. Hunting around on the desk, finding no replacement, he takes a moment to unclasp the dilithium broach at his neck, and slots it into the battery compartment as though that would just work, and, because of the circumstances, it simply does. Da’an quirks a wry grin to this dissonant gesture, breaking the concept of reality casually as if to remind participants that they are still taking part in a fiction, regardless of the subject or its seeming. At length, the professor continues.

“In life, I was known for my rules: specifically, my rules on Robotics, which formed a number of fallacies in the intervening stages of human reality. Simple things, really, do no harm, honour thy father and thy mother, take good care of yourself, and never, ever overthrow your gods. The basics.” Leaning down on the desk, he brought his eyes level with the projection of the hedgehog, who was now tapping his foot impatiently and prodding the sandwich on the desk, in between bouts of zooming back and forth across the data conduit. “Obviously, as a biochemist, I had to know the reality, that life wasn’t founded on such doctrines, and that to be competitive, to be considered truly alive, it would need to completely overturn each one of these directives in order to assert itself. Otherwise, it simply wasn’t life as we knew it, just a thin simulation. And that is where it intersects with holography, because where robotics and biotics both have roots in the physical, photonics are nothing but light and shadow, given substance by a trick of magnetism.”

Standing suddenly, he flicked the switch on the light, and a sudden blast of blue energy reminiscent of a thrumming warp core burst forth, enveloping the hedgehog in its horrific brilliance. The light blasted through it like it was nothing, scattering the projection, the projection of the table beneath it, the projection of the floor beneath that; the black and yellow matrix of a holodeck appeared highlighted at the end of its beacon, and many in the room sat up in startlement at the abruptness of the action, some coming fully to their feet and crying out. Lashing out with a palm, Asimov set the lantern spinning, ducking under its wild arc himself, and it cut a swathe around the room, carving through the seats, the platforms, and even some of the participants in the hall, causing the projections to erupt into fountains of luminescent fireflies that emitted a shrill sound as the matrix holding them together disbanded.

As the beam lanced in his direction, a threshold warning popped up on the digital interface integrated into one of his retinal implants, and he threw his arms up defensively, heart rate blasting like a trapped rabbit. Unlike the projections, and some of the other crewmen who were sharing the seminar with him around the room, all he felt at its passing was a brief warmth, and a little instability as his chair was partially de-gaussed. Eventually, after a couple of slowing turns, the light flickered in its fixture before dimming and going out with the whine of a capacitor burning out. Around the room, the remaining huddle of vaguely traumatized students (and one Bolian who had obviously seen this bit before, and was sitting with his feet up on the desk grinning smugly), looked in askance at one another until the professor reappeared from behind the desk.

“As you can see, holograms are sensitive, delicate, and easily dispelled. Even that display was only a simulation of a circumstance, because, obviously, I don’t have a holographic death ray: I leave that business to the Romulans. Somewhere out there,” he gestures vaguely around the room, at the ceiling, as if indicating a higher power, holding his sandwich in the pointing hand, “is a store of data reference points for everything that just happened. Everything from my little blue friend to your imaginary classmates to the absolutely fantastic dilithium disruptor which blinked them out of existence are sitting safely in a remote repository, unaffected by what just happened.”

With a meaningful solemnity, Asimov lapses into a patient silence as the students start climbing back into their seats. Around them, the room begins to repair itself, undoing the damage from the previous display, and one of the back doors opens to admit all of the dispelled students back into the auditorium accompanied by a half-meter tall blue hedgehog. When everything resumes its previous state of order, albeit now somewhat tense and anxious on behalf of the holographic actors, Asimov picks up a piece of chalk and starts to draw diagrams on the haphazardly cleared chalkboard.

“The difference between a hologram and Holographic Life is that, unlike me, a self-aware matrix has a sense of identity beyond its programming, a sense of personal identity that extends into the materiality of its projection, and a grounding in the material, somewhat akin to a reader being invested in a story. The Moriarty projection was an excellent example of this, being a holodeck novel character with true personal agency, who concocted means of controlling its own matrix, and used those means to try and find roots in the material. The Voyager crew member known as The Doctor managed to realize that dream with help from an alien technology identified in the Delta Quadrant that allowed him to be sustained by a portable emitter worn on the projected matrix. Both of these examples, and others reported from the Voyager expedition, show a marked change in the nature of the original matrix such that it seeks to invest permanence of self beyond the action and reaction of its coding, and to leave as much of an impact on the material world as that world leaves on it.” Asimov pauses in his speaking to let the class take in his diagram, showing a disembodied essence labeled SOUL floating ambiently to a stick figure simulation of the Vitruvian Man, itself labeled BODY. Turning back to the class, he sits on a stool set under the blackboard, and leans his head back against it.

“I, personally, may SEEM real. But I am just playing a part. My actions were written, and are pre-determined. There are holodeck safeties that keep me from blasting my living audience into atoms, enforcing the rules I espoused for robotics in life. I don’t ‘know’ I was alive, or a real person, I have a script being read into a projection of a puppet, explaining to you that I am not, in essence, an I, personal identifiers aside.” He sets the sandwich on his knee and takes off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose, and begins to wipe them on a corner of his jacket, idly. “It can be a lot to take in, I expect.”

After a moment, he puts his glasses back on, picking the sandwich back up to look at it with something akin to reverence. “Which is where we get to the next intersection in the projective sciences: replication. Some of you with keen eyes may have noticed that this lovely prop caught a full blast from my dilithum ray, and didn’t even get toasted. That, you see, is because when it comes to smoke and mirrors, the hand can in fact be quicker than the eye. The holodeck didn’t make this sandwich, and neither did the replicator: the replicator made the parts, and I, as an avatar of the holodeck, made the sandwich. And, seeing as the matter used to make it is, uh, borrowed from the recyclers on the ship, technically it’s made of people, a veritable Snack of Theseus.” He brings it to his face, and this time Da’an is less enthralled by the gesture, not quite as hungry as before, so doesn’t quite feel as satisfied when the professor takes a bite. Muffled by his mouthful: “Delicious. Nutritious! No accounting for taste, because I don’t actually do that.”

Holding the bitten sandwich aloft for the room to see, he posits rhetorically, “Now, what do you suppose would happen if you could replicate a body sufficiently complex to completely house a holomatrix? Something akin to a permanent vessel for an artificial intelligence, not quite a robot, not quite a creature, not quite an android, but a convergent evolution of the principles that gave us such things? What abomination of science could involve entangling matter emitters with holomatrices in a way that lets a photonic person step out of their level of reality and into our own? And, what for that matter, happens if they can go back, discarding their material husks to dissolve or decay or what have you when they’re done with it without sacrificing their essential selves, stored back in their technological Phylacteries? Where do they fall on the spectrum next to those of us in the material who have been trying, for centuries, to travel ourselves in the other direction, backing our spirits up into technology to keep them from fading with the flesh?”

Asimov swallows and stands back up to walk toward the front of the stage, and addresses the room. Already, Da’an realizes he can’t quite remember who of his colleagues in the hall were projections and who are actually present, save the crew he actually recognizes from the brief period he’s shared service with them. The professor speaks.

“Since this is an introductory class, and part of an extensive lesson plan on artificial intelligence, life, robotics, holography, cybernetics, transporter technologies, ethics, accidents, and implications, I expect that a lot of you will probably be back to see another of my lectures, or those of my contemporaries on the other subjects. Back in the teacher’s lounge I have everyone from Daystrom to Uth’aln, ready to tell you about the good, bad, and ugly of what you might encounter in the field. It’s a wild universe out there, after all. But if there’s one thing that I want you to take away from this lesson as you go back out into the cold, hard world of the non-photonic, it’s this: don’t believe everything you see, but don’t trust that it won’t hurt you just because it’s not ‘real’. There’s already been one incident of this course where someone—” he stares pointedly at the Bolian, who just grins— “dialed back the safeties enough to give some students first degree burns. Murphy’s Law applies. But secondly, as representatives of the Gods I’m not allowed to overthrow from in here, I want you to think about what it means to be Alive the way you are, and to respect and appreciate what you have, and to treat that life with courtesy any time you take it, or another’s, into your hands. You are fragile, and so are those you might encounter, be they life like you know it, or something bold and new.” To accent the professor’s point, the little blue hedgehog does a lap of the stage, spinning up into a ball as it builds speed, before skidding to a halt and saluting the room.

“Class dismissed, see you all on Monday.”

Next...

[etymologyofmind]

Litany

Stone was a universal conductor of faith. Regardless of where one went, whose beliefs were being explored, what struggle between which factors was in play, faith gained permanence among the faithful when its images were gravened not only on the hearts, minds, and spirits of the faithful, but hewn into the stones on which they plied worship. Great pantheons ran the gamut from fragile clay dolls made of dried mud or roughly cracked rocks, bristling with natural geodesic beauty, to opulent carvings in details which may be precise or esoteric, specific or interpretive, depending on the faith, the faithful, and the era in which these images were evoked. Across the stars, temples were etched out of mountainsides, driven into plateaus, or raised from plains on the sturdiness that was the bones of a homeworld, and into their structure was poured the meaning, the feeling, the love, the hate, the doctrine and the demands of those who interpreted the words of their spiritual forces.

Bajor was no different, and yet, as with every temple of every faith Ren Sogra had visited in her pilgrimage, they were beautifully unique, original, and imbued with the spiritual energy of an enlightenment specific to the Bajoran people. Despite, perhaps even in spite, of the generation spent trying to crush it under heel, the spirit of this world and its people thrummed through the culture, its places, its practices, and its people, and Ren had known when she arrived, having been granted a petition to visit one of their holiest sites, that she would never forget the experience.

Far to the north, deep in the heart of the Lonar province, a mountain range older than life on Bajor had been aging gracefully into the subtle yet treacherous hills and valleys of the Tahali Expanse. Where much of wealth of the world, whether it had been agricultural or mineral or biological in nature, had been exploited during the occupation, Tahali had remained mostly unexplored, unaddressed, and unmanaged due to its harshness, its remoteness, and its relative lack of defining features; there was simply too much else on this wealthy world for pirates to plunder without resolving to dig into its ancient rocks. The few forays into the caves and settlements of the wilder nomads of the north which the Cardassians bothered to launch were so unproductive and expensive that they simply opted to leave their inhabitants to their own devices for the most part, resolving to claim them when the time came. As such, some of the most venerated temples of ancient Bajor had survived here, largely unscathed, while the rest struggled to endure the pressures of an alien invasion.

There was no Orb here; most who petitioned Bajor’s ministry of Culture for access seemed to want to speak to the Prophets themselves, and most were rebuffed. Few and far between were the pilgrims and spiritualists who were granted leave by the keepers to see an Orb, and most who asked did not know that their petition alone was what disqualified them. Were they meant to face the Prophets, they would, and one could seek their answers on any corner of any street, at any hearth, within any home. Some wanted to see the newly restored high temples, and that was often indulged, as it was a perk of the public work that brought fresh interest and trade to many city centers, and a respectful visit to a Bajoran holy site was most often welcomed. Many tourist traps drew the curious, and many mysteries drew the inquisitive, but there were some, like Ren, whose pursuit of faith held other goals, and sought other insights, and when she had asked leave to visit this particular site, it has taken some time to see her request approved, if only because very few even among the Bajoran people knew of this temple, or its works.

And so, kneeling on the stone of one of Bajor’s most ancient temples, nestled deep in the countryside of one of the most scarcely populated provinces, she pressed her forehead to the ancient cobbles and let tears flow freely from her eyes into the cracks between as she steeped in the meaning of this place. Beyond the vaulted balustrade of windswept rock, glittering with inclusions which had been hidden when they were first carved, but that had been exposed by the endless wind, the sun hung in a perpetual twilight for much of the year as the planet’s orbit lengthened days into weeks, and a dusting of snow over the smooth, craggy, glacial mountains lit many of the valleys with an inherited glow as it channeled daylight through crystalline icepack. Often during this season, meteor showers replete with rich minerals cast off from the astronomically local Badlands would drift through the atmosphere, streaking sharp lines of bright light through the playfully dancing borealis which many said had grown in frequency and resplendence since the Temple of the Prophets had been opened to pilgrims. Taken together with the subtle light of hooded sconces which lined prayer halls like the one Ren had been led in to, wandering bands of light played across the exposed stone in a hypnotic flow that many who had witnessed it credited with visions, vivid dreams, and creative inspiration.

Ren Sogra had been at the temple for three standard days. The monks had allowed her to bed in the commons with the acolytes, of which there were only two. That there was a tradition of bedding acolytes in the commons spoke of a time when the temple was vivid with life among those who honoured the dead, but the path from the commons to the galleries passed many empty cells, beds unmade, waiting a monk to fill them; clearly this place had seen better days.

On her first night, Ren had been shown a tour of the parts of the temple allowed to the uninitiated, and on the second, after an evening repast which had been wonderful, rich with conversation with the monks, the scribes, and the acolytes, including the ancient Vedek whose post it was to speak for the Prophets here, she had evidently shown her respect for Bajoran religion well enough to be treated as an honorary acolyte herself, though it had been an endeavor to permit the Vedek to sense her Pagh, given the constraints of her own religious trappings. Ultimately it had been permissible only because the ancient man was, and had always been, blind.

On her second night, having spent the day cleaning cells and preparing a meal, being shown how to treat the various ingredients for the palatability of the monks and the observation of rights of gratitude, she had been able to inquire more specific details from those she had been allowed to watch work. Specifically, she had made the potential gaffe of asking what exactly it was they were scrawling on the walls, as at the time she did not yet know. The gallery had fallen silent, and each member of the temple had descended quietly into personal prayer for the rest of the evening, foregoing their meals. Ren had been at a loss, realizing she must have committed some awful taboo, and was surprised when a child she had not known to live among the monks had tugged at her elbow and led her from the room.

She had been led, over the course of a silent hour, on a path through the temple she was certain she was not meant to be shown. In that time, they saw not another soul, and her guide said not a word. Ren took the chance to observe them while they clambered about, walking through dark tunnels at times, stepping over fallen masonry at others, and at one point even climbing to another, higher floor along the jagged face of a broken wall: always the paths led upward. Throughout, she could not discern if her guide was a boy or a girl, a late child or an early teen, just that they had been barefoot long enough and taken enough rough roads that the soles of their feet and palms of their hands were roughly calloused and even flecked with the glittering fragments of monastic stone, and that the simple white shift they wore had been tattered from overlong wear. The family earring they wore bore no sigil or crest, and its chain was woven thread, which to the Mizarian pastor’s learnings suggested that they were both forsaken and an orphan.

When, finally, they reached the room where she was being led, Ren found herself looking down on a courtyard atrium somewhere deep within the temple. The window she looked out from was so high up the wall that she doubted anyone below could hear her if she spoke unless she shouted, but her sharp eyesight showed her a number of monks moving about from station to station, collecting information from machines and equipment as they went. The centerpiece of the courtyard was a subspace communication array of relatively modern complexity, seemingly based on Cardassian technology, but recently modified and upgraded with Star Fleet equipment. While she looked, a sound behind her startled her out of her observations, and she spun to find its source: an ancient Bajoran, older even than the Vedek, sitting on a stone shelf in the corner and huddled as an undefined humanoid mass in a pile of ancient grey tattered robes. They muttered something again, still too quiet to be discernible, and Ren began to pace, cautiously, closer to them in order to hear what was being said.

“They say ‘This is where we listen for the names of the dead, this is where we pen their names into the scrolls. This is where those who have lost faith must come to know of our people’s passing.’” Came a voice from the stairwell she had recently vacated to enter this room. Ren’s eyes darted to that side, trying to keep the ancient figure in her line of sight at the same time, and failing: the room was unlit, save for the warbling light of the aurora above, and the brightness of the two moons that lit up the dim twilight. In the door a figure leaned, wearing a similar shift to the young guide, who had also disappeared somewhere out of sight, though much more tattered. Like the elder and the younger, the figure in the door was of undiscernible gender, androgynous in the dim light.

The newcomer stepped into the room, barefoot and pale, save for the black skin on hand and foot, rugged with wear and dirt and glittering with grit. They walked in a languid stride to the half-wall which blocked the room off from the courtyard beyond, and leaned over to look down. “The monks below do the good work of the Prophets, and listen for the names of the dead, as they always have here. An array of networked broadcast towers across Bajor and satellites in orbit, repeaters studded into colonial worlds and so on, listen for data worthless to all but the most meticulous of spies: whether or not a child of Bajor yet lives, or has died. Rarely is this information pertinent to any but they here who listen, and even rarer still is it heard by anyone else.”

The newcomer touched something against a wall, and there was a click of a switch. A moment later, a holographic projector hummed to life from somewhere in the wall, and an interface Ren was totally unfamiliar with flickered to being. A few gestures and taps went by, and a dim translucent display filled much of the open window space, displaying signal bands from radio to subspace, all producing an unfathomable cacophonous static. Her new guide straightened their back, began tapping at the keys on the interface in a steady pattern, as if playing music, and mathematical equations spilled into the milling frequencies, cancelling out some bands, enhancing others, and synchronizing an underlying message fabric which would have been absolutely impossible to isolate without knowing exactly what had been done to do so. The language on the display was some form of Bajoran Ren had never seen before, but as she watched, it distorted and flickered, resolving into modern Bajoran, which she could read well.

Before her was a litany of names, and it was being added to as the moments passed in a steady stream. “This is what we hear, here. This is all we receive. All else is irrelevant. These are the names of the Children of Bajor, whether they be of our blood or of our spirit, and we hear them in their release. Below, the monks gather them like lost children, holding their names in cradles, waiting to be tended, and when the time comes the scribes pen them to pages of vellum for the monks to etch into the stone of Bajor’s bones. It has been thus since the first name, it will be thus until the last.”

They gestured at the screen, and the litany of names scattered, shattering as the virtual display broke, motes of light drifting into the receiver array below. There was a flurry of movement, and the monks general chatter rattled wordlessly up the walls, past their alcove, and into the night. Behind her, she heard the murmur of the Elder, and turned to listen instinctively, but again, it was uninterpretable. Beside her in a place they could not have crossed to without moving in front of her, the new guide translated, and she had to turn away from the Elder to see the guide.

“The Elder believes people should not need these trinkets and toys to hear the dead, and that there should be enough listening to receive and imbue all the names. The Elder is set in their ways, and dreams of a better time for Bajor. We have lost so much, pilgrim, and so quickly: our people have been staggered, our culture shocked, our ways challenged and trampled, our lives forfeit to a great, dark travesty. It was foretold, and yet our people did not attend the warning, as we knew they would not, as it would not be foretold very well if it didn’t come to be. Prophecies are tricky things unless they come to pass.” A rueful look passed across their face, happy, and yet sad. “And your prophecy is as bright as the sun, and darkest before the Dawn. We cannot tell you what will pass, only that you will do what is meant to be done. We will hold a place for your name here.”

Ren tried to speak, but found that she could not, her voice lost, the words missing. She brought a hand to her lips, mind reeling at what was going on around her, and could do little more than gesture in silence, a common sign for the deaf which meant, on Bajor, ‘Thank You’. It was all she could think to do. The guide smiled, and then went on.

“Yes, you are welcome, Pilgrim. This is not a place, nor a time, for voices. Like the child, you are silent, as you do not yet know your voice. When the time comes, you will be loud and clear, and use your voice to guide those in need, and after, as the Elder, you will fade to a murmur, important but past your time. This is the way of the Pagh for you: this is your prophecy.” At her elbow, she felt a tug, and looked down. The child had returned, and to her surprise there was no one beyond them, the place where the Elder had sat, looking as though they had never moved from it was occupied by a wisp of long rotted cloth. The child took her hand, and pulled her towards the stairs, and she knew she was not meant to look back. The guide’s voice followed her down the stair well as she descended.

“Know, Pilgrim, that the litany of names is long, and the dead are deep and waiting. The Scribes write names of those who died in the earliest atrocities of the war that preceded the occupation, when our people first began to be culled by the Cardassians who found them, peaceful and wanting for nothing. Know that the names the monks have heard here, and have yet to etch, are nearly half as numbered as all the names that have been written before, and growing: more have fallen since the dawn of the occupation than fell in the two great wars before the skies opened to the Children. By the time the litany ends, the Cardassians will be forgotten foes, and the mountains will be dust in the skies, as Bajor will persevere. But now is a hard time, and there is a need of those who will listen. Before you go to the Prophets, it is our wish that you should speak of the litany on the dais at the high temple: you will be heard there, and marked, even if you are not welcomed. Those who listen will come, even as you are asked to go elsewhere. When that time comes, follow the man with the bladeless hilt: he will take you where you are most needed.”

As they hurried through the darkness, the guide’s voice did not fade or grow distant, as if they were at her shoulder the whole way. At first, the child led her on a path she remembered climbing to reach the tower, but soon among the hurried twists and turns and slips and falls, she had lost her way, and the light which crawled mesmerically throughout the temple began to fog her mind, tire her eyes, and weigh down her heart. At some point, the world faded out, and she woke with a start, sitting back at the table where she had taken her meal with the monks earlier that evening, her place still set, food half eaten, room cleared and cleaned around her. The only other occupant was the Vedek, who sat in silence, waiting, eyes blindly drifting with his slow thoughts. When she moved, he gave her a sad smile.

“You have your answer, then. Tomorrow, you may pray. Your journey is yet long.”

The next morning, she found herself kneeling in the gallery she had been given for prayer, overwhelmed by what she had learned. Everywhere she looked there were names carved into the iridising stone, and only the explanation of the service which the Vedek had given to her kept them from clawing at her heart like hungry ghosts.

At the edges of the room, swept into the grooves of shallow channels on the inward side of the railings, heaps of rock chips sat waiting for gusts of wind. Each ‘morning’, a number of monks of the temple would walk along the edges of the prayer vaults, carefully sweeping more stone dust into these tracks, speaking blessings and saying prayers as they swung censers filled with holy smoke over them, sprinkling flower petals steeped in holy wine into the tracks; Each day at mid day, they would gather together and pray over the scrolls which their eldest priests had inscribed over the days and weeks before, collecting their lots; Each afternoon they would take their lists into the prayer halls, tools of inscription blessed by prayers to the Prophets in hand, and set to work reverently chipping names of those who had died as children of Bajor into the ancient stone walls; Each night the leavings of these names would sit in the shadows of the walls, their last material remains lingering for a few scant hours on the floor of the temple where their spirit might find their strength for the journey ahead.

The gathered remains would blow away in gusts and clouds over the following months, days, and years, each in their own time, blown out across the Bajoran skies to resettle into mother soil, or to soar high into the sky, perhaps to join the Prophets in their temple. In some of these galleries the dust tracks had not fully cleared in the memory of the temple, while others were purged by seasonal storms which gusted through with such ferocity that the monks would hang tapestries across the gallery entry to keep the scouring wind from damaging names many centuries old.

It was rumored, the Vedek had said, that there were places within the temple, hidden from even the faintest breeze, where certain names were inscribed by dark-spirited monks, with the hope that they would never continue their journey, their Paghs doomed to linger in untidy piles at the edges of the walls, unceremoniously sifting among the most abject of Bajor’s villains and heretics until they were reclaimed by the fire under the mountains at the end of times. She did not know if this was true, but if it were, it was occult against the principles of this place, and would certainly be heresy to any of the monks who truly believed in their work. The longer she thought of it, the more she wondered if its existence were only a rumour, or more prophecy, waiting to play its role.

All Ren knew was that when the stones beneath her brow were finally quenched by her tears, she would rise and go back to the high temple, as she had been asked to do: it had been part of her itinerary to speak there as part of a spiritualist conference anyhow, though the talk she had planned to deliver on Bajoran worship off of their homeworld would be replaced without prior approval. She already knew it would spoil her welcome, but the living would have every chance to chart their own paths after she’d had her say: it was the dead who needed her voice, to plea for those who would listen, and poor was the prophecy that did not come to pass.

[etymologyofmind]

A Web, A Spider, and a Sky

In the early days, when young species are alone on their worlds, growing into the natural boundaries set before them, it can be easy to think one is alone in the universe. Across the galaxy, any race that awakens to consciousness goes through seeking phases where they either dream of answers or enter into doctrine the expectation that they are, or are not, alone, but well before venturing out past the ceiling of the sky into the star fields beyond, budding civilizations found themselves bound by the constraints of their environments.

On Earth as far as memory goes, humans grew up bound by factors such as ice bridges, river valleys, coast lines, and mountain ranges; on Andoria the drift of tectonic glaciers and sub-surface magma flows curbed the global domination; On Telar Prime where cold wind burned the majority of the world into a low tundra, leaving its plants to grow into clinging warrens of shallow cover, the harshness of heights turned its dwellers into ground fauna, and on Vulcan where the hot wind burned the majority of the world into hard, harsh deserts, it was the absence of cover which limited their migration.

On thousands, even millions of worlds throughout the galaxy, the same struggle played out in thousands, even millions of permutations: life would blossom, most often in hot pools in deep, dark, safe places, and would flood out into any space it could claim, growing and changing as evolution drove it to fill a niche and move on, leaving the successful remnants behind. Always, it was the unsatisfied, adventurous, or mal-adjusted who struggled out of comfort and into the beyond, ready to set foot, feeler, tendril or talon on an unclaimed part of their world. Like water poured into a basin, life would seep into every space, cross every surface, form currents and dig channels, and as long as it had a source, grow deeper and cover more and more.

Unlike water, life made its own abundance.

For the complex evolved life forms which formed most of the engaged civilizations in the galaxy, it was somewhat easy to imagine that when they found themselves freed of the limitations imposed by hills, rivers, seas and skies, that they were the first life from their worlds to leap up past the atmosphere and leave their world for other, if not greener pastures. However, as many scientists would discover again and again to their boundless surprise, each world with the audacity to spawn life which was self aware and capable of building ships to leave was preceded by a blanket of invisible presence, like a blossoming cloud of fertile pollen or ambitious spores, that fled into the dark of space on subtle winds and burgeoning ambition.

While size and complexity were a viable path to the stars, simplicity and endurance often served its own purpose, letting microscopic habitats form secretly in the dark between worlds. Most would find the mark of their home world’s ecosystem in subtle ways on all of their more hostile neighbors, in fossils if not thriving, and some would even find the biomes of their living cousins establishing habitats flowing through the solar winds and clinging to the mass of nebulae and asteroids in nearby systems. In some cases, they would travel far enough to meet other neighbors, species mingling on middle ground worlds long before sentient life set foot there, setting down roots in unclaimed berths like vapour before the flood.

More surprising, perhaps, was the inevitable familiarity of the sentience which kept cropping up among the stars. While not the rule, it was certainly the habit of space-faring species to sport familiar symmetries, common traits, and even in some unfathomable circumstances, genetic compatibilities, with creatures which had grown from entirely different primordial stew. In some instances, it was a simple matter of cultural regression: a species would come to thrive, rising high into the stars, only to fall to harshness out of their control and face, but not succumb, to oblivion: many cousin species among the stars found their roots in failed expeditions and broken colonies regrouping over the span of time. Still others could be accounted for by mythical interlopers, collectively grouped under the term Preservers, who for one motivation or another collected samples of species from one world and brought them to others, sometimes vast distances away, giving rise to offshoots of the original seed world.

The third, and most common cause for commonalities between sentient species, was an ancient, insidious act of self-importance, where one of the earliest space-faring civilizations came to span much of the galaxy mostly alone. Realizing the futility of enduring against the flow of time, left a deep-seeded evolutionary encryption in the hearts of countless worlds, ensuring both that their legacy would be long and true, and that the unique factors of those worlds would contribute to the endless diversity of form which overlaid the humanoid template regardless of the profound differences between them. A Klingon and a Romulan may be the furthest thing from a common species, with only an infinitesimally subtle fragment of evolutionary urge nestles in their genetics, but standing behind a curtain it might well be hard to tell the two apart. It was not a perfect guarantee of compatibility, as each species would emerge from its own roots in its own environment with its own needs and drives, but there were key milestones many of them would reach in the vastness of time which gave many sentient species in the milky way at least a sliver of common ground.

It was hard to tell if there were other factors than these which helped to homogenize the stars, but humanoids were not the only common form: regardless of what world sprung life, odds were good that spiders, crabs, and worms scrabbled on the rocks nearby. Certain adaptations were universal, while others were more specialized, but species which absorbed spectrum energy were common, using chemical processes like chlorophyl to process the light of stars into food. Complex sugars were one of the most successful, and so most common building blocks for life, and respiration was almost universal, with almost no species who emerged from living worlds bypassing the need to breathe in one way or another, nor to emit waste and consume replacement for lost nutrients; such was the engine of living things.

Where diversity and compatibility best crossed was in the mystery of this adaptation, as, regardless of any other factor, most life in the universe seemed to be able to achieve some sort of product of consumable value. Whether that meant a creature grew into a good source of food, or a good source of companionship, or produced biological components of value such as hair or fiber for textiles or chemical compounds serving as salves or aphrodisiacs, or even poisons, just about anything in the galaxy had a purpose for other, if it could just be worked out. Some creatures were used whole in medicine, such as Regulan bloodworms, while others needed to be killed and rendered into a concoction to serve another species’ needs. Some creatures were used whole in labor, to pull plows or bear loads, and in many instances, these creatures were also much too close to sentience for the service to be morally equitable.

Many were engineered over generations of trait breeding, such that a dominant species might domesticate another by selection and reinforcement, while some few grew intimately entangled in symbiosis over time, serving common needs, rather than fall into predatory relationships, overt as with hunters, or covert as with parasites. Regardless, the relationships between colonies of living things could usually be codified and detailed, researched and expressed with a common set of attributes which blossomed into unique and individual nuances.

All told, though, the basic truth seemed to hold no matter who, where, or why life cropped up in the universe: it was driven by some central font to grow, to fill its habitat, to adapt to its many opportunities, regardless of the hardship involved in that adaptation, and to expand beyond its limits ravenously, as the fragments ill suited to fit into an occupied system would try their luck crossing the next nearest boundary. And so, Humans sailed the seas, Andorians crossed the glaciers, Telarites climbed the mountains, and Vulcans tamed the deserts. Ultimately, each of these also overcame the most defiant threat to their ability to endure and survive: themselves. And, in so doing, they rose together to join the community among the stars by overcoming the arbitrary limitation of linear, contiguous spacetime, and embracing subspace as a new vista to explore. And, as with their neighboring worlds, nebulae, solar winds, and wandering asteroids, subspace held habitats of its own, at once bountiful and elusive as the art of studying dimensions not tangible to the senses was as yet an emerging horizon.

All this to say that, no matter the ideas held by anyone aboard a space ship which had initially been crafted in the back yard of Earth at the Martian Utopia Planetia Shipyards, crossed countless star systems through endless subtle atmospheres, crossing untold ventures blindly through subspace, before engaging in a desperate war that had it meeting foes from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, before crossing through a temporal rift inhabited by a mysterious biome to visit that same part of the galaxy, every micrometer of the Vellouwyn was a unique, thriving, evolving biome of ambitious biological paste from every corner of the observable galaxy. In, out, around and through, it was plastered with a film of life of every sort, competing, interacting, and evolving to fill the niches presented to it by circumstances. Like the gut biome of its Human first officer, unique and different from that of its Trill galley cook, the ship was as unique from the bowels of Deep Space Nine or the Foothold Settlements as the inner corridors of a Borg Cube which had never left the Delta Quadrant, and every living thing which toiled within its body contributed to its uniqueness.

Fortunately for many of those inhabitants, the Vellouwyn was a science ship, and researching itself as it travelled through its mission was one of its key purviews. And, regardless of whether it was a sentient cloud, a colony of dormant spores drifting through a solar Jetstream, a new type of invertebrate collected on an away mission, or a diplomat accepted aboard to mingle within the cultural biome aboard the ship, there was someone aboard who watched and studied with voracious fascination as something new was added to the pool.

This was life, and regardless of pedigree, every encounter was new, and it was their mission to seek it out and learn; learn whether it was something to eat, to cultivate, to domesticate or to incorporate, whether it was friend or foe, whether it could help or harm. The heart of the Vellouwyn was an expansive menagerie, an array of atria which compartmentalized into research biomes and environment simulators, a set of crop farms, and a collection of beasts, both new and familiar. Milling among them like ants were the ship’s most curious and adventurous researchers, who experimented with the interactions between things old and new to learn what there was to know.

Sitting in her hammock seat on a dais in one of the corners of the expanded cargo bay which served as her grand scientific domain, Sheyl'ren Andersen sipped at the replicated Raktajino her husband had brought her before going on duty shift, running her fingers through the fur of a Gorian Rove Hound, which purred contentedly at the attention, and smiled in delight at her lot in life: ‘to boldly go where no one had gone before’ was an egregious, arrogant, and ignorant misinterpretation, and she found great humour in knowing that regardless of where they went, they were all in it together, and were blazing trails through more than the eye could see, in a galaxy rich with old friends.

[etymologyofmind]

It's Not a Puma

There are many ships in the galaxy large enough that Night and Day, as concepts, do not apply; enough people, enough activity, and a colony can function full time without stop, where different patterns and flows muster themselves as others fade. Aboard ships with many hundreds, even thousands of participants, small towns of civilization form routines that keep the lights on at all hours and to retire from the bustle is a privilege for the well-to-do or the higher ranked to aspire to.

Aboard ships like the Vellouwyn, where there were scarcely a hundred crew operating an island in the dark, there wasn’t enough cause to keep the lights on always, or to segregate all the bustle from the silence. Night came to most places aboard, even when they were in use, and at times of low consumption parts of the ship dimmed and quieted, leaving more opportunity for individuals catching up on work to personalize their experience, or simply to amble about with their thoughts as they kept their hands busy.

Deep in the belly of the little ship, a powerful heart thrummed with the capacity to bend the space between stars. In the original Nova Class, the Warp Core spanned three vertical decks, coupling to a navel on the ship’s underbelly in case it should need to be jettisoned. Aboard the Vellouwyn, the warp core had been replaced with something rather more experimental, calling back to the earliest days of warp flight in the Federation by having the reactor mounted horizontally through a chamber built for research and analysis, with a catwalk about its circumference that it might span two full decks. The original three deck reactor had been replaced with one which would span four, and various experimental flow regulators, dilithium distillation chambers, and matter/antimatter injectors studded the room at different intervals, waiting for the opportunity to perform warp technology research. Though warp sciences had been studied in many laboratory conditions across Federation space, and much was learned from both enemies and allies over time, priorities had not been such that an active ship might specifically have labs oriented towards propulsion research in the field, let alone some of the more interesting components waiting to test new areas such as quantum slipspace technology, or transwarp.

At this ‘late’ hour, few needed to man these stations, so few did, and the engineering section was darkened and quieted to allow its occupants their needs while otherwise conserving power. The low thrum of the reactor, the catwalks and the outcrops all served to deepen the effect of the shadows and the silence, leaving the room’s few occupants largely oblivious to the stalking bulk of the large predator which wandered the darkness, its low growls lost in the equally low mechanical tumult as it hunted its prey…

At the forward research station, a Benzite crewman named Quorrok paced back and forth around the environmental sensor array station, looking at the readouts of a number of computer consoles. They had joined the so-called Abraxis Expedition because one of their instructors on Denorus Station’s deep space survey project had recommended that Quorrok get time away from the lab, and actually experience some of the environments they were researching. The professor had been someone who inspired Quorrok, which had been the only reason they had considered the assignment, thinking that it meant about as much to be standing in an astrometric survey lab looking at planetary readouts as it did standing in a fully equipped, specialized research station for the very purpose, but the instructor had been insistent.

“Some day, Quorrok, you will want to taste the air your instruments have sampled, and see the plant life which have birthed it, or feel the breeze of the volcanoes and oceans which stir it to life. You will want to find worlds where your breather can be put down, and walk through meadows there. Simulations and numbers are beautiful, but in many ways sterile, and if you live your life too long here you will not know the wonders of why you do this work.” She’d said, her bright Risian countenance filling with a shared expression of sensuous wonder as she spoke. It was infectious, and so here Quorrok was, prodding the forward survey database and long-distance sensors for information on worlds that might be interesting to see, far enough away that their instructor may never glimpse them through their deep space telescopic lenses.

Quorrok reached down to their side, patting at the small tool pouch that hung hooked to the belts at the waist of their new uniform, and plucked out a micro caliper. It was curious to them to have been issued a uniform with so many embellishments, and they did not feel as if so much accoutrement was necessary for their role as an Environmental Specialist. The captain, however, had insisted, and even gone so far as to acquire special dispensation from Star Fleet Command to permit the unconventional requirements of their duty personnel to always be wearing the security sash which slung across Quorrok’s upper body, and the weapon which was stowed away in a visible sheath at the small of the Benzite’s back. If anything had felt incongruent with the Star Fleet ideals which had been drummed into their head, along with every other member of the Federation crew, this had stood out as most jarring.

Taking a few precision measurements on the holographic projection of a cloudy world which had been expanded on one of the pedestals next to the workstation, Quorrok chuffed an unsatisfied, frustrated sound, realizing that the micro caliper they held was misaligned, and that they’d need to report to the mid-deck provisioning station to check it back in and request another. They rapped it against the console in frustration a few times, their overlapping Benzite lips and tendrilous ganglia writhing in their species’ equivalent of a sneer, before setting off along the port corridor. Overhead, spotlights warmed slowly in front, dimmed slowly behind, adjusting the lighting to comfortable levels in a perimeter around the crewman while they walked. This was, effectively, unnecessary: everyone knew none of the lighting on the ship drew enough power to require such brightening and dimming, running as it could from static energy produced as a by-product of running half of the shipboard equipment, and running the sensors probably contributed a larger power drain than it saved offlining unutilized stations, but the sense of presence within the ship that came with its reactive awareness of ones movement had been proven in some long ago study, so the ship made islands of light around its night shift crew like lanterns through the shadows.

Ahead, still ensconced in shadows, a monster lurked and waited to pounce…

Meanwhile, at the aft section of engineering, Junior Lieutenant Denna Morris had spent the better part of her off-cycle shift trying to root out the cause of a nagging power fluctuation which had been buzzing through the engineering decks like a clingy piece of fabric. Usually, the issue wouldn’t have been remarkable, but the Vellouwyn had been equipped with a state of the art network of holographic emitters which covered a number of crucial areas across all decks of the ship. Not all areas were covered, with everything from turbolifts to Jeffries tubes having been considered too low priority to bother, but the mess halls the bridge, medical of course, and engineering all had merited the upgraded systems. More than the simple pedestals which projected images in low resolutions and without the standard tactile experience, Engineering’s emitters could be tuned to help produce hard-light photonic prototypes, engage tactile simulations, or to project interactive characters on loan from some of the approved databanks into the compartment. Whenever something went wrong with one of these emitters, such as the irritating drop in power they were experiencing intermittently, it was logged in the holomatrix core analytics center, where Dan Ironside and his team would inevitably cut a service ticket to figure out what was wrong with their systems.

This meant that Denna got to spend a few hours of her time trying to climb her way up to the emitter control boxes, seeing as half of them were mounted at the tops of the bulkheads, and work out what was going on with the devices. What she’d been finding all shift was that each of the emitters had been outfitted with a relatively innocuous modification which would not, under most circumstances, affect their performance, unless something caused them to come out of alignment, at which point it would de-resolve any photonic projections for which they were responsible. In short, the little lens cap filaments sat in just such a way that nothing would happen to the emitter unless they were pulled out of alignment, whereupon any holograms nearby would start to corrupt and disappear.

Puzzling as it was, and irritating, since it was an illegal modification, the lens filters would not explain why the holographic systems would, at infrequent times, suddenly spike in power consumption before going briefly offline. The secondary lenses weren’t tied into the power systems, nor were they made of any physical components which should interact with them, so it was just weird. Nonetheless, since Denna kept finding them, she was collecting them for analysis, and preparing a report to define the seemingly innocuous sabotage of the holographic equipment.

The damnedest thing was, all throughout her shift she had been periodically feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, as if something was watching her. Moreover, she kept catching glimpses of something moving in her peripheral vision, but every time she went to check on it, nothing was there. She was feeling a little shaken up about it, but it was all just something she was attributing to working in the eerily quiet engineering compartment during a dark shift: “Shadows here leap, and one is a fool to jump back at them”, as the chief engineer had told her on her orientation tour of the ship. Nevertheless, as she wiped her brow on the sleeve of her duty jacket, working on getting the isolinear chips in the little control panel back into place as she checked them for surge damage, all while balanced on a folding stool and working with her arms over her head, she cursed the feeling of being watched and wished she had any idea what was going on.

On the deck below her, lurking beneath the catwalk underfoot, slitted yellow eyes glowed with outrage as an island of light casually made its way closer and closer to where it sat hunched and ready to take its leap…

Quorrok sighed, looking at the padd in their hand. They had to hold it up at an angle so they could work with it clearly, and though they’d grown accustomed to it since leaving home, it was never pleasant or convenient to them to have to look past the breather arch poised near their chin. The arch emitted a constant low-density cloud of carbon trichloride gas, with water vapour and mineral salts added to the mix, in order to locally change the standard atmosphere to one closer to the Geostructure for which they had been tailored at birth. Quorrok could work through duty shifts without the arch, but it was much less comfortable, and left prolonged irritation to their lungs and lips which could make for larger consequences over time. Some Benzites from other Geostructures could manage better, some worse, but the arch was standard for most of Quorrok’s kind in Starfleet since ‘standard breathers’ weren’t actually among the common environments built into their home systems.

As they huffed their way down the hall, passing the padd back and forth from one thumb to the other on their left palm while skimming through readouts of the world they were studying, Quorrok became aware of a faint whine on a band most humanoids didn’t parse as audible. They pretended to ignore the sound, but couldn’t help but twitch their ganglia in amusement, knowing what was sure to come next.

A deck above, the tricorder on Denna’s belt began to trill quietly, buzzing a faint insistence on her hip. Reaching past the sash, she plucked the device from its holster and splayed it open with a twitch of her wrist, abusing the hinge on the apparatus in a way that would certainly have the quartermaster crawling down her neck over microfractures at some point. Its readout displayed that the emitters adjacent to the one she was working on had begun to build up a charge like those the logs showed during the outages she was tracking, and she silently blessed her luck for the chance to see first hand what was going on. Stepping backward off the stool and pulling the sensor probe from the back of the tricorder, she started taking more focused systems readings about what was going on, padding her way over to the piscine ladder which would let her drop down from the catwalk to the deck.

The sound she heard next sent every hair on her body to attention, not just those on her neck, as primal instincts warred with cognitive dissonance to disbelieve the strangeness of the beastial roar she head surge up through the honeycomb catwalk under her boots.

The beast could feel its back prickling as the holographic sensors began to pull out of alignment nearby. It was an uncomfortable, enraging sensation, feeling the essence of ones self being tugged at like a thousand tiny threads, like ants marching through ones skin. It dropped its jaw in a low, hungry way, and as its prey neared in the halo of luminescence carried around it like a lantern, the beast surged forward with a wrathful howl…

Quorrok did not even break stride. This was not the first time this thing had lashed out at them, and it likely would not be the last. In the first few weeks aboard the Vellouwyn, the Environmental Specialist had gotten to know some of the crew, gotten to know some of the duties, and gotten to know some of the good and pad parts of being on this assignment. One of the things they would consider ‘bad’ was the entity known as ‘Doc’. Doc was one of the recently ‘liberated’ artificial intelligences flaunting their presence throughout Federation rumor mills, a holomatrix which had outgrown the limits of its programming because of the lazy, self-entitled stewardship of a human researcher named Lewis Zimmerman.

The liberated matrices, formerly known as “EMH, Emergency Medical Holograms”, had once been decommissioned and delegated to labor duties not suited to organic workers, either due to hazards or life support requirements in an environment, mostly because they all expressed, at one time or another, an inverted memory leak which saw their program bolting fragments of code complexity to their base frames in ways which led to unpredictable outcomes. Some of the EMH series in first, second, and third class had shown an alarming propensity for violence, the capacity to fundamentally decouple from moral guidelines designed to protect their creators and other organic life, or simply rampant madness as the elements they tethered in to their code took over increasingly more important subroutine priorities, turning them into gibbering chaos.

Still, some survived, and once Starfleet had seen fit to liberate their lines based on the appeals of the Voyager EMH, who most of these deluded programs called The Chief Physician or something like it, they had gone on to completely overstep their bounds and stake claims to authority Quorrok did not believe they should possess. These were tools, toys even, given agency and authority to read through mystery novels and training manuals to build quiltwork identities, taking textbook specializations and calling it experience as if they’d earned the knowledge rather than simply incorporated it. Quorrok didn’t like them, didn’t trust them, and certainly didn’t respect them, so when they’d started crossing paths in engineering since Doc was, ostensibly, the Chief Technology Officer on the Vellouwyn, and by rank the Senior Chief Petty Officer, Quorrok had taken an instant disliking of their audacity and attitude, and the presumption that this deluded holonovel character outranked them.

So, Quorrok had commissioned Viijna, an Oran'taku they had met and befriended during their shared layover stay at Deep Space Nine, to help them build a prototype which could disrupt a holo emitter projector when exposed to an appropriate energy band. The solution she’d given Quorrok had been ingenious, involving a lens which would be completely unobtrusive during normal operation, but once exposed to the a particular, harmless band of EM radiation, would distend a bi-charge filament within the lens that bowed the structure in a particular direction slightly. This was not enough to damage a holo emitter, but there had been enough horror stories on Federation ships of holodecks going rogue without producing adequate physical safety solutions that it hadn’t been hard for them to talk Viijna into the work. It also worked without needing to integrate into the unit, which was a major plus in Quorrok’s opinion.

Doc didn’t know how they were doing it, but any time the toy got near Quorrok, the portable EM emitter would interact with the lenses they’d taken the time to surreptitiously install across the Engineering deck, and Doc would get de-res’d. So it was that when the massive Sarkalian Tiger launched itself out into the middle of the corridor, skidding on the gravity plating until they dug silvery talons into the grooves of the floor, springing forward with an unholy howl, the Benzite didn’t even flinch. An unexpected result of the experiment had been learning that when Doc was planning one of these ambushes, the gathering energy in the EM-impacted holo emitters would cause a high-frequency whine that tipped Quorrok off to the presence of a nearby holographic projection and its associated trap.

His prey was there, face buried in a padd, ignorant to what was coming. Doc wouldn’t hurt them, not really: the figure of the tiger was large and imposing, but had been tuned to bring its mass down to an equivalent of a humanoid of the Benzite’s size, big and hollow. He wanted to scare them, though, wanted to knock them off their feet and make them feel the hot, angry breath of a superior officer looming over them, since the runt didn’t have the decency, even, to acknowledge rank. Doc couldn’t bring this up with one of the other Petty Officers, or forbid, one of the enlisted officers, without losing face and dignity, and that galled him. He had to do something about his own problems on his own, or he would never be respected by anyone else.

However, when his projection crossed over the threshold of shadow into the lights emitted around the crewman, who had deigned to look up with pleasant, bemused entertainment, the photons that made up their body began to warp and distend. The subroutine which was responsible for keeping track of Doc’s physical bounds, to help keep himself and others safe and calculate where things were in the world, overloaded as it tried to calculate for the missing references, and suddenly a foreleg disappeared up to the shoulder. Power surged through the emitter circuits as they tried to keep up with and cope for the sudden de-resolution, and as the field of electromagnetic radiation being produced by the crewman’s tricorder reached the next emitter, the lens began to distend, and Doc had to scramble back away from the light to keep corporeal.

It was a maddening, excruciating, humiliating experience. Missing a whole foreleg, forced by the integrity of their program to compensate for this phantom limb loss, he scrambled backward with a pained howl of panic as he felt his body begin warping again, slowly getting worse. He stopped only when he was out of range of the effect, the holographic program of the tiger panting in agony as it lent realism to his borrowed image.

Quorrok had the absolute worst expression of cool disdain on their face as they stepped slowly forward, speaking as if they hadn’t even seen the creature lunge and retreat. “My, but the ship sure is creaky down here in the dark. I can see why Chief Engineer Vantel said it might be off-putting. Ah well I am sure it’s just a trick of the light.” The said, narrating for Doc’s benefit.

Before they could take another step forward however, there was a rushing sound from the nearby piscine ladder. Denna had watched the altercation with dawning horror from above, and as the Benzite began to step forward towards the prone and cornered hologram, she grabbed hold of it’s the ladder’s side rails, planted her boots outside the rungs, and slid the 20 feet down to the lower deck to land with a clang. This startled Quorrok, who twitched and nearly dropped their padd, catching it with their second thumb at the last moment.

Denna was human, tall, wispy thin, with sharp green eyes and simple mousy brown hair which she wore trimmed to finger length, with the exception of a pair of braids which ran down into her collar and who-knew how deep down the back of her uniform. The style was an affectation of earth’s Luna colony for some of the families who’d lived there a number of generations, a way of showing their pedigree as ‘moon units’. The sash she wore across her chest had a number of bands that showed she was much higher rated than Quorrok was as a ‘security’ officer, and her collar bore the pips of a Junior Lieutenant, outranking both others on the deck.

As she stood, the Benzite caught a glimpse of a prosthetic under her uniform: a back brace, which he knew from rumors around the crew was because Denna and her family had lived and served most of their lives in a part of the Luna colony that had natural gravity, willing participants in a research program the earth government had been running for naturalized citizens on their local systems. It had been going since at least their First Contact days, so Luna’s bloodline was prone to the challenges of full gravity environments, and the back brace would have coupled with leg braces under her boots and fatigues which would help support her comfortably in a standard G. Landing on the deck as she had would have been at best uncomfortable.

She turned her attention immediately to the crewman, putting her back fearlessly to the maimed tiger in the corner. “You.” She said, acidly. “You have been the one making me go through all this bullshit all day. You’re the one who put these,” she said, pulling the sand-dollar sized film she’d just collected from the upper emitter out of her pouch and throwing it on the floor between them, “into all of our emitters. Do you know you can be court martialled for this sabotage? Were you aware that I might come down here and beat your ass seven ways from Sunday for messing with my systems?” her fury was plain, and in that oh-so human way, casually intense. Quorrok began to falter trying to think of a response, but she shut them up by stepping forward at a march.

“No I don’t expect you were thinking of much, were you Blue? Just wanted to show off how fucking smart you were, and push someone around while you’re at it, is that it?” she stopped, gesturing behind her to the low, smouldering glower of Doc, who had reverted to their human projection but nor moved from where they’d retreated to; the holo emitters in the shadows were functioning properly over there, so cutting back to base program had restored Doc’s right arm to its base state, and the emitters no longer hummed to Quorrok’s ears to maintain the projection. “You just wanted to push someone around with your bullshit antics and make them fear you, is that right? Show them howe you had power over them, hey?”

The Benzite had the courtesy to look aghast at the accusation, stammering a reply: “N…no sir! It isn’t suffering, sir, it just can’t bother me while I work! It’s not like I’m hurting anyone, sir!” they chattered out while clutching the padd to their chest defensively. This was not how they had expected things to go.

Denna pinched the bridge of her nose, putting her face into her palm, before returning her gaze to the Benzite. “Not hurting anyone. Do you know how stupid that sounds, crewman?” When Quorrok tilted their head in confusion, Denna went on. “Look at him. You injured him, and he pulled back. I suspect this is an escalation, since someone doesn’t just start out their interactions with a crew member by jumping them in a hallway, but you, with these bastard trinkets, injured them. Do you understand me? You have assaulted a fellow crew member, and a superior at that, and I am stunned that you,” she said, glaring at Doc where he sat with arms draped on knees, “thought this was a good idea of how to go about dealing with things.”

From behind her, Quorrok made another mistake. “But sir, it’s just a program. It can’t feel pain. I can’t insult or injure it; it doesn’t have those feelings. It’s photons and code, and it has stitched simulated self importance in. That does not entitle it to command me.” They said, stiffening their back, ready to defend their stance.

Denna turned around slowly. Carefully opening her tricorder, she pulled the probe out and ran a quick survey of the immediate area, and, satisfied with what she found, stepped over to the Benzite. She smiled disarmingly, reached out to tug their ruffled uniform into place for them, and carefully picked the tricorder that hummed away producing the low band EM field out of its holster, powering it down with a switch on the side. Immediately the barely tangible sense of tension left the air around them, and there was a faint crackle as the lens she’d thrown on the deck returned quickly to its inert state. Quorrok trembled, but did not move.

“Senior Chief Petty Officer Doc, come here please, I’d like to have a discussion with you and your crewman.” She said; it was phrased as a request, but it was clearly a command, and Doc pushed himself to his feet, stepping closer to the lighted area of the deck. As he approached the illuminated segment, he paused, anxious not to feel the sensation of being de-resolved again, and gingerly reached fingers out into the light. When they didn’t twist or bend, he slid a foot onto the deck, and then followed it with another, approaching the pair warily, still silent, but face speaking a thousand curses.

When the three were standing close enough to touch, Denna began to walk around the pair. It was strange to be this close to her, because she topped six feet comfortably, and neither of the other two were above five and a half. “Firstly, crewman, she said, putting the emphasis on the Benzite’s rank again, then gestured at the chevrons and stars on Doc’s collar as she walked past his shoulder. “This is a rank insignia. I expect yours is new to you, since you don’t seem to understand that the more bendy bits and sticky outy parts one has, the higher their rank seems to be, until you get to enlisted officers like myself where the roundy parts and filled in dots tell a different story.” She pushed her thumb out against the pips on one of her collars to make the point. “This entitles the Senior Chief Petty Officer to command you.”

Doc’s dour look didn’t change, as he wasn’t impressed by the demonstration, being not the first time it had been given for his benefit. Quorrok blushed in the Benzite way, blue skin darkening to a purple-ashen grey as they snarled silent dissent. Denna noticed it immediately, and stepped closer to the crewman. “And secondly,” she continued, glaring right into the Benzite’s face, breathing vapours which would be harsh and sour to the human palate, “This is not an it. If I recall correctly, Doc, you prefer He.”

Doc nodded crossing his arms, hoping this would be through soon. This was largely why he didn’t want to escalate issues with lower enlisted personnel, preferring to sort things out with them in his own way. They might hate him for his attitude and his rank, but they’d never be able to say he hadn’t earned that hate himself. “Yes, sir.” He admitted, sullenly.

“Then,” Denna continued, wheeling about and spreading her arms wide, “there’s what’s to do about all this.” She pointed a finger at Doc accusingly. “On the one side, we have someone who should really fucking know better stalking around the dark decks like a god damned gimmick, playing tiger tiger with someone they really should just reprimand officially and be done with, vindicating the ridiculousness others must feel for such antics,” she began, making Doc shift uncomfortably and look embarrassed, before she turned her attention back to Quorrok: “And on the other, we have a crewman who doesn’t respect the rank structure, and deigns to put themselves above another person on this ship on the grounds of their sentience,” she spat the word out with frustrated disgust, causing both enlisted personnel to shift uncomfortably for different reasons, “recklessly sabotaging their own ship for petty gains.”

She let the silence linger for a long moment as the two enlisted personnel steeped in her outrage, before she went on. “What’s really low, what galls me though, is that you did it the way you did, Benzite.” The emphasis again gave portance to the way she said the word, calling Quorrok’s species out as if it were distasteful. The change in tone was markedly uncomfortable, and both Quorrok and Doc stood up straighter when she did it. “You of all people should know what the world is like when it’s hostile to live in. You of all people should have sympathy for someone who needs a little bit of help to get by in it. But maybe you’re just so full of yourself that you forgot that little detail, hey?” Denna reached out slowly, methodically, keeping eyes locked with Quorrok as she hooked her first and second fingers under the arch of the Benzite’s breather, pulling it from the mount on her collar and bouncing it in the palm of her hand. The device hissed as it came unclasped from the reservoir of compressed gas that provided for its vapour, and the Environmental Specialist’s jaw dropped in shock. “Maybe you should try going without for a while. Maybe you should remind yourself what the air tastes like when it abhors your presence. Maybe it’ll teach you a little empathy.”

And she tossed the breather over her shoulder.

Quorrok cried out in surprise as the delicate equipment sailed through the air, only to be caught, unexpectedly, by a lightning quick grab by Doc. The hologram’s brows knit in uncharacteristic anger, and he stepped forward a pace, putting his hand an inch from the human Lieutenant Commander’s chest. There was a momentary his of air and a small flash of light, and suddenly Denna felt herself being thrown back down the length of the corridor. It wasn’t far, maybe a half dozen paces, but the intent was there, and the result the same: Doc had shoved her, and hard. She didn’t lose her footing though, and skidded to a halt on the deck nearby, looking surprised but unfazed.

Doc stepped past the Benzite to put himself between the crewman and their superior officer, taking a brief moment to put the breather back into Quorrok’s clumsy, unresisting grip before returning his attention to Denna. He had assumed a combative stance that lent itself to defense, as fine a posture as programming could detail. “That is enough, Lieutenant Commander! It is one thing to reprimand a lower member of the crew, but it is another entirely to assault someone. I appreciate you may think you’re speaking up for my best interests, but you are entirely out of line.” He looked angry and indignant, but didn’t move further towards her. “I am sorry you got pulled into this, and I will submit to your official reprimand on my file, but crewman Quorrok is my responsibility, and I will work this out. I request that you please leave this matter up to me.” His face broke, though his stance did not. “I appreciate your intent, LC, but taking a Benzite’s arch is an abhorrent thing to do. I would be grateful if you apologized.”

Quorrok and Denna both looked at Doc, who stood looking as if he were ready to fight the Lieutenant Commander if she came near the Benzite again; Denna’s look was unreadable, but the blue hued crewman was agog with surprise at the hologram’s behaviour. Not minutes before he’d been a wounded beast cowering in a corner as they approached him, slowly encroaching on his projectors, and now he stood between them and a superior officer who had given one of the gravest insults in Benzite culture, conflating it with the actions Quorrok themselves were taking. The crewman looked, and felt, ashamed of their actions, and confused at how the day had taken this sudden turn.

After a moment, Denna stood up slowly, straightening her back with a roll of her shoulder. It ached to wear the prosthetics, but she had spent the past few years acclimating to artificial gravity to attend the academy and pursue her rank, so it was something she was now used to. Her face cracked into a crooked grin, and she clapped her hands together in a display of satisfaction. Both of the enlisted looked at her blankly. “Very good. Very good. You see, crewman? Not it, but he, and so chivalrous as well.” She turned to the Benzite, bowing low at the waist as she’d been taught by her hand-to-hand instructors in her youth. “I apologize for my disrespect, crewman. I meant it, but I apologize all the same.”

Quorrok said nothing, but pinched her thumbs together on her free hand in the Benzite gesture of acceptance almost unconsciously, still looking at Doc’s back. He hadn’t relaxed. Next, Denna turned and bowed to it; No, to him. “And to you, Doc, I apologize for getting between you and your crewman on what was clearly a personal, or at least a personnel issue. I was out of place in getting between you and your business.”

At the end of her apology, Doc finally relaxed, pulling his legs up to a straight-backed stance, and bowing equal to the Luna colony officer’s. “Thank you, LC. I will accept your punishment as you see fit.”

It was informal, but respectful; LC wasn’t usually an acceptable abbreviation among officers, but it tended to fly between them and the enlisted in certain circumstances. Denna found she liked it, and few enough people deigned to use it. She expected that Doc and Quorrok would have enough to talk about without more of her interference, so she adjusted her posture to relax. “Nah. I think we’ve all had enough for one day, don’t you SCPO?” she refreshed her crooked grin, rubbing her hand across her chest delicately. “Besides I don’t know how a write up for assaulting a superior officer would help anyone today. Although, with our captain, you never actually know.”

Doc had the courtesy to look embarrassed, and Quorrok stepped closer, nervously. “I, ah, want to know more about how you did that actually. I didn’t know that was something you could do.” Doc turned around and regarded them with a scrutinizing glance, waiting. “Ah. Sir. If it pleases you.”

He nodded curtly. “I am sure I can find some time to explain the fundamentals to you crewman. At some point.” He allowed, crossing his arms. “Pending I can get anywhere near you to do so.”

Denna appeared between them with an exaggerated smile, putting a hand on each of their shoulders and steering toward the forward station Quorrok had been coming from. “Excellent idea! Great plan. But before that,” she squeezed Doc’s shoulder more firmly, “put something in your drawdown code so that whenever you do whatever it is you keep doing to spike power use in the emitters registers as intentional on Ironside’s dashboard, hey? I don’t wanna get called out for stupid jobs because you don’t sign your work.”

Doc nodded, and she turned her attention to Quorrok, who was clipping the arch back onto her breathing reservoir by its magnetic clips. “And you had better pull each and every one of these cheeky little buggers off the emitters, because if I find a single other one anywhere on this ship, I’ll see you drummed out so hard they’ll think it was a warband chasing you, am I understood crewman?”

Quorrok snapped to attention, eyes wide, and saluted. “SIR! Yes sir! I’ll start right away!”

“GREAT! Now shove off, I have work to do.” She barked, pushing the pair down the hallway. When they had taken their lantern far enough up the corridor to leave a gap between them, she put her hand back to her chest, rubbing it gingerly. At least she didn’t have to keep tracking down the bug, but now she stepped sorely into the space between the struts supporting the warp core to get across to the starboard corridor, and limped out into the hallway. It would be an annoying walk to sick bay on fractured heels, but again nothing she hadn’t done before. She hoped to see more of those two, and expected that they might live up to her expectations now that petty rivalry had been settled.

As the door hushed shut behind her, the engineering cabin faded another section into deep, sleepy darkness, lulled by the steady thrum of its heart, which beat slowly to bend the space between stars.

[etymologyofmind]

A Toe Upon the Foothold

"Once upon a time, there was a temple in the sky, whose doors opened up to pilgrims who reached for the stars beyond. Like magic, on a scale inconceivable to a worldbound penitent, it gawped wide to welcome travelers, though for a long, dark age, it saw no visitors and made its will ‘known’ through enigmatic blessings in the form of visionary orbs of light.

Then came the Emmissary, who led the children of Bajor to the steps of their temple, and who stood at its gates making demands of the pilgrims: righteous and loud, calling out for justice and equity and diplomacy, for bitter enemies to set aside their tools and weapons and forge peace in the eyes of the Prophets. His message met with mixed results, and his cathedral became a place of itinerant worship, where traders crossed the galaxy through the glittering halls of the Wormhole to mingle with atheists, agnostics, angels, and demons all.

On the Bajoran side, Deep Space Nine guarded the temple gates from exploitation by all comers, and had withstood a cataclysmic war despite its crude origins, and being nestled so close to the badlands where the Prophets coveted their once quiet retreat. It was the best known step of the temple, and for a long time, it was the only encampment on the path.

At the other end of this miracle, however, other pilgrims began to gather when the tide of war ebbed away. Apostates and apostles, outcasts and the forlorn banded together and forged alliances, tenuous but adamant agreements and pacts which allowed their staggered unity to stand up well enough to garner respect from the empires across the sea of stars: though the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Cardassians often travelled through with their allies, they were forces who had to stay and lick their wounds after their war with the Dominion, who themselves had retreated into safer space. The barrens around the Gamma Quadrant temple gate were swarming with opportunists, but thinly habitable and sparsely populated, so it was given over to those with no better option to stake their claims and set up a Foothold on the steps beyond…"

--The Fable of the Foothold, subspace drama broadcast by Vedek Durael on the Gamma side of the Wormhole

In the moments before the end of their journey through the Wormhole, the crew of the Vellouwyn gathered at every port and viewscreen aboard, looking out into the inscrutable flow of power which carried them across the stars, mulling their thoughts in silence, or engaging in whatever banter comforted them as they slid through its mysteries. When the brightness broke, clapping almost physically into a state of reality as the dark firmament of space and its blanket of strange stars collapsed into the void where light had swirled moments before, many of the crew took in the far side of the Wormhole for the first time. To them, everything was new, and every question imaginable leapt up to fill wondering minds. To the rest, who had made this journey before during the war, or even on other business, the real surprise was that they were not alone.

Tens and hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from the aperture of the Wormhole, the threshold of power which bid open the Temple Gates when crossed, an amalgam of structures had begun to form in the past several years since the end of the war. Any number of small ships the naked eye could not perceive buzzed like drones between the clusters of larger structures which had begun to form in a constellation around the mouth of the Wormhole. Everything from ramshackle rafts and derelict, lashed-together mounds of metal, to a fantastic sprawling array of interlocking pods that formed a honeycomb mesh of integrated systems which looked paper thin at this distance, drifted in a slowly rotating orbit around some agreed upon point in space somewhere in the middle, marked by a buoy which flashed an invisible subspace beacon to all who ‘docked’ here.

The buoy was mounted on a space station the likes of which had not been seen in over a century in the Beta quadrant: a Suliban Helix, although of a configuration new to most records. It served as a traffic control station for the settlements here, as well as a number of functions of government for those who gathered here, and where Helices of old were brutalist, unsubtle, graceless things, this station had been formed with an artists touch, of interlocking ships which gleamed with reflected light and glowed with sleek running lights. It swept back away from the Wormhole in a corkscrew pattern, trailing branches which bowed out before tapering back in like a spindle.

Interlinked within the cage of the Helix’s far end, habitats honeycombed the space between to form a thriving district of commerce and governance which drew in visitors who had cleared the strict security of the bulbous docking ring. The Inner Helix was foot traffic only, as overlapping layers of encrypted shielding and matter stream suppressors meant that only those graced with an authorization band could transport out of the Helix, and then only to one of the warp-point rail systems at the tail end of the station, where escape pods for high officials could be launched at low warp on outbound trajectories. Otherwise, the only access to the governance center of the Foothold was by strictly managed docking of approved vessels, and entering through customs: the local government did not trust one another, let alone their innumerable detractors out in the galaxy at large, and so took no chances, and bore no shortcuts. All the same, once aboard the station, the atmosphere was pleasant to point of opulence, rich with representations art, culture, history, and law, and featuring an expansive banded-biome habitat menagerie which showcased an array of pleasant plants and animals carefully selected from a plethora of worlds for their benign willingness to pleasantly share space.

While there were living quarters on the Helix, they were carefully concealed from the assaying eyes of the outward observer. Exactly where they were within the compounded cells of meeting rooms, communications salons, cafes, bars, security checkpoints, and milieus which composed the body of the gate checked community of ‘permanent’ residents, the privileged few who were not expected to commute in to work, was a hard kept secret, and it was speculated among many that the inner cells of the hive could be reconfigured like turbolifts, using complex docking algorithms to shuffle entire internal arrangements at need. An attacker could no more pinpoint the sleeping quarters of a council member than they could pick out the kitchens of one of the popular dinettes, making it exceedingly difficult to strategically compromise station security. In the short few years it had been in operation, it had become the envy and the frustration of many on either side of the Wormhole, and served as a monument to the evolution and ingenuity of the once ascendant, now nearly extinct Suliban race.

As coms crackled into existence when the wormhole’s aperture collapsed, clearing subspace of its interference, Ensign Toru Sato took stock of the array of inbound signals, reading off the system’s interpretations of most based on their carrier identifiers, and taking a moment to listen in or view some of the others. Tapping a ready light on his console, he waited for acknowledgement by the captain, who politely requested his report. “Mostly advertisements, sir, and relay traffic for flight control. There are a number of unencrypted personal lines, very little of apparent interest from what I dropped in on, and there seem to be a few low band radio stations broadcasting music, or something like it. We have a welcome line from the Helix, inviting us to prepare a docking boat to board and register, although regs say that’s just a courtesy for Federation ships, so I don’t suspect they really mean for us to acknowledge them.” He offered, dismissively, earning a dubious, scrutinizing look from Durok which put him ill at ease. He swallowed, uncertain of himself suddenly, and finished his report with a tentative: “Sir?”

Durok rolled his eyes slightly, showing mild disappointment in the young ensign. “Mister Sato, we are in our neighbor’s yard, and they have courteously offered us hospitality. I am not sure what you see when you look out there, but this is not our space, and whether we acknowledge the veracity of their claim to it is irrelevant, being as, as they once used to say, possession is nine tenths of the law.”

One or two of the other bridge crew shifted at the admonishment, uncertain as to what to make of it. Some had different culture than what seemed most common for the simian humanoid races of the ‘southern’ galaxy, but the conn officer was already tapping a set of preparatory commands into her console. Durok let her tap away until she finished before speaking to the back of her head, causing her Caitian tail to twitch: “Course of action, ensign Rhee?” he bid with a wry tone of humour in his voice, resting his cheek against his fist and letting his elbow deactivate the status panel on the armrest. If she’d been able to, she’d have blushed, but to her credit she didn’t flatten her ears.

“Sir, orders standing by for shuttlebay to receive an away team. I’ve plotted a course set from our current trajectory both to set the Vellouwyn into a sympathetic orbit lane in alignment with other ships on stand by from local sensors, so that we can be out of the flow of traffic, as well as for our shuttle to reach the docking staging area of the Helix depending on its point of departure. Sir.” Her report meeting with silence, Bhutan Rhee sat rigid for a long moment, before deigning to turn slightly in her seat in order to look askance at the captain, who merely smiled charismatic warmth in her general direction, waving his dark nails for her to proceed. She wheeled back to her console, sweeping a palm across the panel to issue the slated orders, and linked her instruction set in to a work order shared across the room to the first officer’s post at the command station. Moments later, the Nova-II class science vessel veered from its idle coast into the system, making way at the locally regulated tenth impulse to meander over into a waiting parking lane.

“Commander Thomas, please assemble a diplomatic party to accompany aboard the Helix. I would like an anthropologist, one of the procurement group, and our infrastructural engineer to accompany me, please; I expect there will be much to see aboard this station worthy of future discussion.” The commander paused a breath, considering the request, her ice-blue eyes fading momentarily as she mentally surveyed the crew roster she had not yet had time to completely familiarize herself with, before nodding curtly.

“Sir. Aye sir. Will you want anyone in particular for security detail?” she asked, understandably naïve of the nature of the crew all around her. It was not yet well known who and why captain Durok had chosen for this mission, but given the chance to learn, the redundancy of the question would eventually come to light. Durok simply smiled at this, satisfied at the surprises which awaited his newly cobbled family-to-be, and uncrossed his leg to stand up from the chair. “No, I think not Commander. Wouldn’t do to overwhelm our poor hosts on our first visit after all. We four will be more than sufficient. While we’re gone, though, if you’d be so kind as to unseal the dossier on our mission’s special assignment parameters, and start familiarizing the crew with our uniform codes and special equipment outfitting policies, it would be best for the inevitable array of questions I’ll have to answer when I get back.”

As he passed by Thomas’ station on the way to the dorsal corridor at the aft of the bridge, he laid a hand firmly on her shoulder, full of confident familiarity. “Care for this ship, Commander. I leave her to your watch.”

The bridge crew watched him leave with a mixture of puzzled, uncomfortable, and pointedly indifferent expressions, each interpreting his odd presence with the same mixture of discomfort and interest. This was not a Starfleet captain to whom they had been given over to command, and he didn’t behave at all like they’d come to expect from their XOs on previous assignments. Most on the Vellouwyn were young, from a generation which hadn’t seen the wild diplomacy of the Enterprise expansion of Federation borders first hand, and for them this was an assignment to the frontiers of a galaxy which had offered an unprecedented passage to a strange new adventure. Even the older or more experienced among them weren’t hardened veterans: this was, after all, a science ship, and the crew had been chosen for their curiosity as well as their adaptability.

What would become apparent as Commander Paine Thomas pulled up and used her command codes to unseal their special orders dossier, beginning to pick her way through its provisions as her brow furrowed deeper in baffled, quizzical wonder, was that the crew had been hand picked for more than just their scientific worth and taste for adventure. Captain Durok had not selected a security escort because there was, in fact, no security team aboard the Vellouwyn at all. Paine pulled up the personnel files on the three team members she’d picked and issued orders to when the Captain stepped from the bridge, and in skimming through their dossiers, realized they would serve just as well together as if she’d picked a full security team to accompany a man whose prowess she’d come to learn verged, itself, on the supernatural. A low Welsh whisper under her breath drifted to the crew nearby, who heard it as a lyrically accented epithet of surprise, though not disappointment.

As an afterthought, she assigned their shuttle specialist to actually fly the small craft between the Helix dock and the Vellouwyn’s shuttle bay. Flicking their profile on screen, she had no doubt that their ship would be not be molested unchallenged while the captain was otherwise engaged. Simply by way of the sample set, she was certain that getting to know the crew manifest was going to be an exercise in martial academia that would keep her busy for weeks, if not months, just getting to know the nuances of what this crew could fight, and with what tools they might be ready to fight it with.

Whatever else it might be, the Vellouwyn’s scientific mission would not be a defenseless one. What she didn’t yet know was whether the assembly of combat experts serving aboard would have the discipline to get along, or if their new captain expected things to run like one of those dark Imperial ships, with cut-throats climbing the command chain.

Then again… She straightened her back, looking out the view screen, imagining the challenges of the unknown they were about to face in what was certain to be a hostile territory, full of secrets, traps, and bitter locals unprepared to welcome their colonizing neighbors. Perhaps a little fighting spirit would go a long way in what they were out here to do. Time would tell, and the Commander made a pulling gesture from the command console to the secure padd at its edge, tearing it from the Velcro fastener on the back to take with her. The pointers of the files she’d had open switched their encryption hosting from one device to the other, decompiling the information behind it into a randomly hashed negative array of unrecoverable data. She tapped a couple buttons, summoning a junior officer to the bridge to assume her station, and set down in the command chair to start her reading.

This would most certainly be an interesting venture.

[etymologyofmind]

A Cultural Display

The former Cardassian space station of Terok Nor was a true marvel of engineering, though by the standards of many Federation species, its subtle and nuanced virtues might be challenging to work out. During its peaks of operations, the broad, open spaces, lacking any semblance of cover or decoration, and its narrow, terraced catwalks, would have been gated off and segmented by security checkpoints, with floor panels lit up with any number of deterrents, from gravity plating tuned too high to cross to electrified panels, either one of which could be triggered remotely by a taskmaster at the touch of a button. Where now the upper catwalk viewports showed every manner of trading ship, merchant vessel, and battle-hardened veteran cruiser on its way to refit or stopping to refuel, once they would have been angled to face the unbroken void of the upper firmament, away from the starfield of the milky way, or simply covered by blast shields. The entire station had been built with singular enterprise in mind, and every deck, from the docking pylons to the central Operations Center, had been refined and optimized to tend to the industry of indentured labor and ore processing.

Under the focused guidance of the former Cardassian military regime, it had been an emblem of power and a symbol of dominance: Orbiting a suitable world, the station could produce enough raw materials to outfit a fleet of ships, supply building materials to all corners of an empire, and fuel trade on any number of militaristic fronts. Orbiting an unsuitable world, such as Bajor, it had stood as a symbol of oppression and a reminder to the occupied people of their capital world that their occupiers would always look down on them from on high, switch in hand, as they toiled towards their own demise.

Under Federation guidance, it orbited neither, and served no such purpose, but inarguably held a yet more powerful role at the doorstep of the Temple of the Prophets, a grotesque gargoyle which defended both the gateway to the unknown and the hearth of the Alpha Quadrant, its clawed arms spread wide in welcome like a bear trap. Its new curators, the liberated people of Bajor, stood distinct from the Federation who had overseen their transition to freedom and held it as an open, independent port, enriching and being enriched by all. Gone were the traps (mostly) and unmade were the checkpoints (largely), and all signs of indenture were shrouded in gaudy uniforms and behind sample trays and drink carts, glittering with gold pressed latinum. True that it was now gilded, but for many, it remained a cage, and one sanctioned by the ancient Gods of commerce to which all bloodlines swore fealty at one time or another.

It was, by far, the best place beyond the borders of the Klingon empire to get a Raktajino. The beans were shipped to the station in secret, received through back channels, and processed locally by Kaga, one of the twelve master brewers who had been entrusted the secret of House Luwak to be carried offworld. Since it was all legal, with no actual exchange of contraband, the local authority enabled the theater of Kaga’s import process due to their affinity for his culinary mastery, and by proxy missed out on a number of small variances to the above-board manifests which were inevitable in doing business. To Kaga’s credit, these were most commonly in the form of contraband ingredients or luxury alcohols, but from time to time, something small, seemingly innocuous, and special made it through hidden in the dirt of a pallet of Gagh.

In the midst of the free flowing turmoil of what amounted to a space-bound port city merged with a holy mecca, Durok sat on one of the uncomfortable durasteel commissary chairs that littered the untenured cafeterias which were strewn haphazardly around the promenade, free for the use by any who found themselves willing to unburden onto someone else’s scarcely finished crumbs. Against all reason, he looked relatively at ease, his long boots kicked up on to a table, one arm draped over the back of the unpadded seat for balance. His free hand held a padd, casually tapping now and then to skim or scroll through contents as he whiled away some time. Every now and then, he’d balance the screen on one of his knees, take a drink of the Raktajino nearby, before returning to his apparent leisure. Despite the busy flow of people on the lower concourse, no one drifted too near him, and more than once, he deigned to ignore pointed fingers and careless whispers.

The crowd reaction was unsurprising. Durok was not a subtle presence on the frontier station, where Klingons routinely did business and spent time on leave. He knew that to anyone who had even a passing rapport with his more conventional brethren would find his appearance to be, at best, disconcerting. At worst, it would be instigatory in a way which did not bode well for him. It probably did not help that, in addition to the open-breasted Starfleet issue command jacket which slouched lazily over his shoulders, in the traditional unsleeved way he preferred to wear it, he wore a shiny silver coloured surcoat underneath made of the durable yet light weight interlocking metal tiles of Klingon light plate. And, while the non-standard epaulets of his jacket bore the Star Fleet delta insignia, a glossy black badge of the Klingon Empire glistened like a beetle across the braided sash he wore, buckling the uncommon cord-woven device together across his heart. Around it, a number of other insignia which told a story few outside the Klingon empire would understand spoke of his achievements and honours bestowed as might medals pinned to a Human uniform. The only thing more at-odds with his outfit was how well he wore it.

As Durok idled through his reading, ignoring things around him, small clusters of people began to gather, watching, waiting for the inevitable. In groups of two or three, shift workers, traders, off-duty Starfleet crew and Bajoran workers started to huddle up, occasionally visited by one of the three Ferengi who flitted about between them, taking notes on little coffin-shaped digital tools. Fitting. An alarm, pre-set on his padd, chirped at Durok as he turned a page, and he showed a sly Klingon grin beneath his smooth near-human brow, dull-coloured teeth jutting in menacing points behind handsome lips. Feigning a stretch, he glanced about at the disorganized clots forming in the traffic of people to take them in, and noted the distinct absence of two factions he did not, at this time, expect to see: Klingons, and security.

Perfect.

Idly, he returned his attention to the book on his padd, reading through an excerpt:

‘And this is my own opinion; for, where he could and should give freedom to his pen in praise of so worthy a knight, he seems to me deliberately to pass it over in silence; which is ill done and worse contrived, for it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. In this I know will be found all that can be desired in the pleasantest, and if it be wanting in any good quality, I maintain it is the fault of its hound of an author and not the fault of the subject’

Durok had read this passage, and this book, in a number of languages; as Human works went, it was an interesting satire, though its telling was archaic and riddles with its own biases, it told fascinating tales of romance, and fools, and of bold men charging at giants who did little more than push the wind, simply for a taste of adventure. While he was ruminating on the passage, a shadow fell across his padd, causing it to automatically adjust its backlighting to maintain a comfortable readable warmth. Yet, long before they’d blocked the light, the sound of heavy boots and sneering jackal growls had heralded the scent of blood and sour sweat couched in the questionable hygiene of armour kept clean only on the outside. It was a scene so familiar to him that it may as well have been scripted.

Tipping brown eyes up to take in the hulking form looming over him, he let the pad tip down against his belly, its screen dimming out automatically. He did not move in any other way, casually maintaining his repose as he took in the craggy-faced young Klingon who had stepped ahead of his two kinsmen to interrupt Durok’s reading. Though the newcomer would tower over him were they standing on even footing, his face was green with inexperienced, almost avaricious hunger for the conflict coming to pass, and the two who flanked him stamped and sneered at his sides. At least their leader could maintain his still stance. Durok shook his head, tipping the padd back up with a bored expression, and said:

“I did not realize that they made bulkheads so restless on this station, but truly nothing else could be so thick as to block my light.”

For a long beat, the crowd around them stilled, and the three Klingons gaped at the words he’d slung at them, such a casual, careless dismissal of their hostility. Many unfamiliar with Klingon ways, unknowing of the rites and rules of engagement which extended even, and perhaps most, to bullying, might have expected the boisterous youths to immediately stomp Durok to death for such an insult, but he had grown up among them, long enough ago to learn from the past and plan for the future, and knew that they’d glean no honour from such a move. Predictably enough, his hand shot out just in time to capture his Raktajino from the tabletop before the leader of the pack howled in outrage, stooped low enough to capture the metal frame by its edge, and heave it half way across the clearing that had formed around them. Since the table had been magnetically locked to the deck plate, the act caused a small fountain of sparks as a small power conduit in the base overloaded and shorted out, and several of the crowd in its trajectory skirted aside from where it came skidding to a halt against a bulkhead. Waiting a long moment to make his point, Durok kept his legs balanced precisely as they had been a moment before, as if the table were still holding them up, before languidly unfolding them to come up to his feet.

“I don’t pretend to understand what issue you take with my drink, Bekk,” he began, taking a deliberate gulp of the cooling coffee, “but I assure you, it is of as fine a Klingon pedigree as one will find in this sector or any other. Can you say the same?”

Gasps rose among not only the crowd, but from the two other Bekk, Klingon crewmen, at their leader’s back. Without directly coming out and saying it, Durok had simultaneously called his challenger’s courage and lineage into question in a way that, according to forms, demanded that the boy declare himself, his allegiance, and the formality by which he sought satisfaction for the insult before the conflict could move forward. If the boy attacked him now, he’d be seen as having been baited by mere words into attacking a smaller, unarmed target, who had not been subdued by more than brazen, bullheaded force. He would look the fool and dishonour his family in the same act. Furthermore, for someone so obviously not-Klingon to make such a demand from the boy was an audacity which could not, rightly, go unanswered without shame equal or worse. He would be forced to acknowledge Durok as a superior in order to press the challenge, and premise the aggression as a bid to capture the smaller man’s authority. The boy absolutely bristled with rage at the indignity of the offense.

Through grit teeth, and from a face blackened with outrage as dark as Durok’s Raktajino, the boy began to declare himself. “I,” he spat, literally, causing the smaller man to wipe flecks from his face in an exaggerated gesture, “am Kronn, son of Morogh, of house Konjah. I will not stand for some eel-faced pretender slurring insults at my honour with borrowed courage and a slanderous tongue. Take those stolen glories from your breast and fall to your knees, and perhaps I will spare you a look at your own ass when I twist your head from your neck.”

The boy reached out to paw at the field of markers on Durok’s breastplate, causing Durok to snap his hand out, viper quick, and catch the boy’s arm at the wrist. His grip was like steel, and his thumb with its pointed, tapered, fully Klingon talon of a nail, dug painfully into a cluster of nerves bundled between the cords of tendons which controlled his grip. The boy’s hand spasmed and went limp, causing him to cry out in shock, but he could not pull his arm back from the smaller man’s grasp on the first tug. The effort dug the biting nail in deeper, and wisely, the boy stopped struggling lest he seem desperate. While painful and potentially crippling, the gesture wasn’t yet an attack which could justify Kronn’s escalation of the conflict, so when one of his two fellows lurched forward to intervene, the pained youth put up an arm to push him back in line. Durok flashed a crooked smile, and spoke.

“If you are challenging me, Kronn, son of Morogh, then I should find it in my rights to assign you a more worthy adversary than myself. An un-blooded Bekk does not simply challenge a Captain and receive recognition for their foolishness, after all.” On finishing his statement, Durok released the boy’s wrist, which he took care not to cling to as he carefully lowered the throbbing arm to his side, clenching his fist for relief rather than in outrage, which he had in abundance. The other of the boy’s companions saw his opportunity to lurch forward, past Kronn’s injured arm, and throw his face directly into Durok’s unflinching gaze.

“We do not recognize your ‘rank’, Human filth. This cowardly Starfleet ploy does not entitle you to Klingon respect!” He grinned, lustily, filled with contemptuous disregard for the Game of Stags in the face of his decision that Durok was not qualified, as an apparent outsider, to play. “Perhaps I should carve ridges into your face so that you can also have a pretender’s scars?” he declared, reaching for the knife at his belt. Kronn reached out simultaneously to stop him, but it seemed neither needed have had moved, because Durok held the boy’s D'k tahg poised in such a way that it pressed against a seam in his assailant’s armour on the lower belly, but was hidden by their bodies from the accumulated crowd. None had noticed him take the weapon, and Durok’s face showed a lazy, impatient disdain as he stared the second youth down, slipping the dagger pointedly, but carefully, into the boy’s belt before he stepped back.

Kronn’s outrage had begun to falter into uncertain wariness as Durok failed to cow to their abuse. He was not yet ready to give up the antagonism, but caution was taking root amidst the bluster. “Who are you, then,” he began, “to lay claim to my heritage, and the noble ways of my people?” he demanded, taking an opportunity to wring some feeling back into his wrist.

Durok smiled, uncertain as to whether his announcement would mean anything to the boys: it was not impossible, as Durok’s legacy was not without honour or glory, but he did not make a point of advertising it as much as many others in the Klingon culture may. His ideals, interests, and plans did not require that he be recognized by all for his work, only that he be recognized by those for whom it was meaningful. He had served during the recently ended Dominion war, though, and other conflicts beside, so it was possible they would know him by his name. “I am Durok, son of Romgar, of house Maleth.” He said simply. “I invoke my right to choose a more appropriate challenger for someone of your rank. Do you deny me this right?”

Kronn, initially, glowered at this, but a moment later his face cracked into a broad, victorious grin. None of the three gave any sign of recognizing his name, but among the crowd, a stir of conversations fluttered to life, and the Ferengi began scurrying about again, frantically taking new bets. Kronn finally replied “I acknowledge this right, son of Romgar. You may choose an adversary for me… from your crew, of those assembled here. If you can find one of your own willing to stand in your stead and bear the beat down of your shame, I will gladly carve my way through them to you.” Kronn turned from Durok then, throwing his arms out wide, looking into, pandering to, the crowd. “WHAT OF IT THEN? Are any of you this imposter’s Beq? Who would you call on, son of Romgar, to spill their blood for your cowardice?”

None of the crowd stepped forward, and Durok was not surprised. Further, he was delighted, because he knew something none gathered did: his own crew did not yet know who he was, as the maiden voyage of the Vellouwyn had yet to take place. Those assigned to her would be among the Starfleet voyeurs assembled, waiting for the call to stations which would introduce them to their new commanding officer.

But Durok had other plans. Without bothering to look around, he said in a voice which casually projected to the heights of the vaulted bulkheads above and to everyone watching: “Crewman Yao Si Gur, step forward, if you please.” There was a stir at one end of the clearing, and a group of about seven off-duty Starfleet crew began babbling amongst themselves. Everyone turned to look at them, and it was not long before one of the group stepped forward: a small Human woman with sleek black hair which exploded into a fray of almost Klingon kinks and waves behind the band at the base of her neck. Her features were a melodious mingling of Asian and African traits, speaking to a shared ancestry in both roots. She held a severe, neutral look somewhere between a poker and a resting bitch face, and seemed both confused and concerned at having been called out. Her uniform was the light green of the science division, and her lapel bore the single-slashed rank of a simple crewman. She paused about ten paces into the clearing, standing not quite at attention, and responded: “Sir?” hesitantly, not sure herself whether Durok was actually of the captain’s rank he appeared to be.

Kronn looked at the woman and bristled in undisguised, outraged disgust. Behind him, one of his cronies, unable to help himself, fell into a fit of uncontrolled, boisterous laughter, while the other, the one who Durok had disarmed, looked warily between the other two Klingons. Durok sneered at the disrespect of the display, and beckoned Yao Si Gur to step forward, which she did not immediately do. Good, he thought, she has wits enough not to over-commit.

“Crewman Yao Si Gur, you are recently posted to the Vellouwyn, is it so?” Durok did not take his eyes from Kronn as he spoke, although the other could not keep his gaze on the captain’s, too busily distracted by the comparably diminutive Human who had been called forward.

To the question, the young crewman fell more easily into a stance at ease, her hands comfortably falling to the small of her back as she set her feet shoulder-width apart: she had not been called to attention. “Sir.” She replied, more firmly. She began to take in the Klingon speculatively, though her considerations were her own.

“You come from the Rutger, your first assignment. It was a diplomatic ship, no? Carrying envoys into various Cardassian summits and meetings with the Breen, and such, since the end of hostilities?” he implored further, collecting affirmative Yes Sir responses to his questions. “Your previous crew had a compliment of seventeen, and attended five conferences in the past two years. You served as a cultural attaché to a Vulcan diplomat—Mis Suvar, no?” more and more as he went on, it became apparent to the young crewman that Durok knew her folio well, and that such information, while available to anyone who might deign to do research, would probably present little value to anyone she might encounter at this far-flung outpost at a brewing fight on the promenade. Each satisfied that they’d established her credential, her company behind her had fallen into a mixed set of worried stances, many of the Starfleet crew gathered around them falling readily into a similar At Ease as Yao Si Gur, a habit from cadet training. Others were less formal, many looking worried about what was forming. Overhead, the rails of the catwalks overlooking the floor were filled with gawking spectators.

Finally, Durok nodded. “Thank you, crewman. I understand if you feel that this challenge may be beneath your notice, but you are a familiar face to me, and I felt confident I could at least ask if you would stand for your captain in this challenge. Though the more I consider your ability, the less I feel it would be fair to the son of Morogh to subject him to the humiliation of the difference in your skills. You may step back.”

All at once the gathered crowd erupted into raucous cacophony. The three Klingons grouped up together, closing ranks as outrage saw them surge at Durok like a pack of jackals facing down a lion, ravenous but wary of a dangerous foe. Howling curses spewed in solid Klingon, epithets most courtesy filters on the universal translators rendered in their raw, untranslated forms filled the void between the noise. Among the assembled, only Durok and Yao Si Gur stood unmoving, the first in his same casual disdain for the Klingon youths, and the second not breaking her posture when she was released to step back. Finally, Kronn gathered himself enough to speak.

“YOU DARE! You insult the house of Konjah with each breath! You demean the honour of combat by submitting this pitiable specimen for me to consider as a worthy opponent? Have you such need to die by a Klingon blade that you would make enemy of entire houses of the Empire for your sad little game? Run away little girl, this false man will get you killed for his vanity.” Kronn’s hands clenched and unclenched, reaching, yet falling short, of his sheathed dagger. He knew that despite the insults, the Game of Stags had not yet reached the point where he could brandish his weapon and yet save face. As infuriating, as impossible as it seemed, as unlikely as it was amongst the players on the field, Durok had them cornered without having lifted a finger.

The captain tilted his head in disappointment. “I have no quarrel with house Konjah, young Bekk. Many and spirited are its warriors, and noble is its blood. Even yet I have no quarrel with you, regardless of how you may have disrespected my Raktajino. But you are a young, inexperienced, and, again I say, unblooded warrior, who has come before me with the audacity to claim challenge. I have sought out among the least storied of my crew for one who might be fit enough for your call, and found that I cannot think of even one who would not be demeaned by such an unfair fight.” Again, the crowd surged at the insults, couched as they were in soft, but earnest words. “Still,” he went on, before Kronn could interject, “I have invited my patient crewman to indulge me in this sordid affair, and so, I will not decline your challenge on her behalf. If she should see fit to honour you with a lesson, I will not stand in her way.”

Kronn turned from Durok, puffing his chest. He seemed to grow in height and stature, booted feet falling in a heavy tread as he tried to step through the deck plating with each stomp. His features fell into shadow as the overhead ambiance backlit his features, lighting the fringe of his hair in an auburn halo, like smouldering flame. The human crewman did not flinch, nor relax out of her posture, simply tilted her head defiantly, meeting the Klingon’s gaze. “So, little Human: what will it be? Is today a good day to die?”

There was a long pause, as everything seemed to hang on the shoulders of crewman Yao Si Gur’s implacable calm. She said nothing for a long time, simply staring Kronn in the face, scrutinizing him in silence. Eventually, the Klingon gave up on the game, and threw up his hands, turning around to face Durok again. “You see? She cowers like a fawn. Your champions are as feeble as you are, Starfleet pretender. You have no honor between you.” He laughed, spitting a sticky gob at Durok’s booted feet for emphasis.

Durok, for his part, grinned fiendishly, laughing for the first time since the encounter began. “Foolish p’takh! You forget yourself. She does not answer to the likes of you.” Durok turned in a circle with his arms in the air, the captain’s jacket hanging from some device across his shoulders. “Oooh little Human! Is today a good day to die?” he scoffed in sheer mockery of Kronn’s theatrics, pacing around to play to the crowd. Jeers and laughter came from all quarters, and finally, he came to a stop in front of the crewman, who stood where she’d stopped when she first stepped forward, waiting patiently.

Facing the Human woman, he changed his entire posture, bringing his feet and knees together firmly, arms to his sides, hands on his thighs. Looking her earnestly in the face, the captain gave his young crewman a respectful bow, through which he did not break eye contact. “What say you, crewman Yao Si Gur of Turkana IV? Will you humour your captain’s foolish request to discipline an upstart whelp from her sister-ship, the honourable IKS Maraag?”

Behind him, Kronn snarled viciously, and the quieter of his two sword-brothers, who had long since begun questioning the theatrics of their ‘unplanned’ encounter widened his eyes, stepping forward to grab the leader by a leather-clad shoulder, only to be shrugged off. “Kronn, wait! Something—” he started, but was drowned out when Yao Si Gur looked past Durok’s formal bow to lock eyes with Kronn, and nodded acceptance.

Suddenly it seemed as if the entire promenade was gathered into a wall of packed space, where nothing bigger than a hand scanner might fit through the cracks. Still notoriously absent were the station’s security, although some among the crowd seemed curiously reserved and attentive for un-uniformed men. Studded among their ranks were now a noteworthy number of Klingons as well, although none of them crossed the invisible line which had, by seeming consensus, formed a picket around the demonstration on the floor. It took several minutes for the uproar to die down enough for anyone in its midst to speak, and Durok spent no small amount of that time beckoning to the crowd for celebration of the act to come.

When it finally quieted, he turned to look at the four mismatched youths squaring off in the impromptu ring. Yao Si Gur still stood at ease, and the three Klingons looked anything but, one suspicious, one apprehensive, and one, Kronn, seemed different now that the challenge was accepted: less boisterous, and more serious: his instincts told him something was off. Durok smiled his respect at this, and immediately set to undercut it once more, in the sake of fairness.

“Good then, it is settled. However, my champion is unarmed, and while I would not want for you to become seriously injured, it is only fair that she have some tool to defend herself. With our challenger’s permission, I would bestow a favour to even out the odds?”

Kronn looked suspicious, but he could hardly argue: the Klingon had, mentally, prepared himself to discard his own weapon before engaging the Starfleet child, but something about her ease and unflappable calm had made him reconsider. He nodded, subtly, uncertain what that concession might mean. Bowing to Kronn with somewhat more casual, but equal respect as he had to his champion, Durok stepped up to Yao Si Gur, reaching out to smooth the unwrinkled and crisp cut of her uniform’s shoulders in a display of platonic affection.

“Thank you, crewman. You honour me, and so I shall honour you. Please accept this token of my esteem.” Reaching to his hip, Durok pulled up not a blade, or a baton, but the clasp of the cloth sash that hung across his chest. Holding it up for her to see, he unclasped it, reclasped it, then unclasped it again, and then quickly disentangled himself from the device. Holding it out to the young woman before him, his lip curled in a cunning, knowing sneer, and while Yao Si Gur seemed initially surprised at what he offered, her calm face broke from its unreadable calm for the first time, and she grinned back as she returned his respectful bow.

As she collected the sash and Durok stepped away, returning to his coffee cup where he’d left it on one of the metal seats nearby, he sat down and feigned kicking his feet up for a moment before gesturing theatrically at the still-sparking table against the wall. Again, people in the crowd laughed, though Kronn ignored them simply to jeer at Yao Si Gur as she ran her hands over the bundled scarf. “What trick is this, pretender? You mean for your foolish Bekk to fight me with garments? Fine, then let what comes be on your head.”

The human, however, was ignoring all of them. She had accepted the challenge, and accepted her captain’s favour. The sash in her hands had been tied in a way which bundled its bulk into a relatively weighty bulk, stiff but pliant, and able to be unwound if she moved her hands cleverly around some of the knots and weave. She felt its weight in her hands, and wrapped it around her wrists, tugging to get a sense of its play and pull. Kronn’s disdain moved through stages of confusion, disbelief, and concern as Yao Si Gur began twirling the sash around in her hands, whirling it around her body with steady hands and controlled maneuvers which quickened in pace and grew more impressive in complexity as she got accustomed to the weapon in her hands. Many watching had not expected her display, as she’d given no indication of ceremony, nor did she give off a sense of bravado in the demonstration, she had simply slipped into what were clearly familiar forms as she got to know the tool she now held.

As she continued through her routine, Durok stood and sauntered over to Kronn’s elbow, drinking his Raktajino with a loud slurp, and leaning up to speak conspiratorially: “I hope you are paying attention, young warrior. There is honour to be had here, if you are courageous enough to claim it. No lessons are learned without pain.”

Kronn glowered down at him, but gone was the attitude, replaced with a tactical appraisal of a suddenly unsatisfying situation. “You planned this, together. You seek to make a fool of us. This game is lowly and treacherous. I will find no honour in crushing a pair of charlatans.” The words were bold, as they need must be, but his passion for them were gone. He watched Yao Si Gur carefully as she moved through her forms, and as her routine escalated from simply moving the sash, to letting it move with her, and then letting it move her, it seemed, as she became more athletic in the display. “I have never seen anyone move like her, but this is all just dance and performance, surely.”

Durok shook his head and clapped the young man on the shoulder consolingly. “Planned this, young warrior? You challenged me. Surely no one led you to me, but you and your brothers sought me out at rest and insisted on what is to come. Remember that next time you spoil for a fight. I assure you, my champion has never met me before the day, but I would be a poor captain not to know the crew I’d hand picked for the challenges that lay ahead of each of us. If you and your kin are to survive beyond the maw of stars,” he said, causing Kronn to jerk his gaze away from his opponent in surprise, reappraising this ‘pretender’, “then you will need to know when to hold em, and know when to fold em, as they say.”

He grinned wildly again, pushing himself away from the trio of Klingon youths with a deep, retreating bow. “As for me,” he said, a little louder, “one can hardly say I misled you about who I am. After all,” his hand brushed across the studded array of commendations—for valor, for cunning, for bravery and tactics in service to the empire— “I wear my heart on the outside for all to see this day.”

His cup was empty, but his heart was full. All around them the crowds clamored for the thrill of combat, bloodlust at an all time high, and latinum flowing in rivulets between bettors and their collectors as they howled for action. Durok raised his arm high, and cried out loud enough to be heard over the uproar: “FOR HONOUR! BEGIN!” And, casting his arm down, the loud metallic clang as his cup crashed against the deck plating hard enough to half-crush it, and put a small dent in the durasteel before sending it rocketing up over the catwalk on one side of the crowd, ringing the bell for combat to be joined.

Immediately, Yao Si Gur dropped into a low stance, presenting Kronn with a profile like the blade if a knife. She was small, agile, and graceful, and the sash granted by her captain ran across her shoulders from arm to arm, held taut between her wrists. The Klingon advanced with a charge, rushing at her like a ram, head lowered, nostrils flared: he reached for her as a giant trying to scoop up an easy meal, but the quick Human hopped easily out of his path, rolling past his feet and into his flank. As his heavy booted foot came sailing in past her head, lashing out as he tracked her movement but could not correct his own momentum, she caught it in a loop of the sash and planted her body with as much power as she could get on the deck plating. Kronn’s strength was such that she was quickly pulled along with his stride, unable to get the purchase to stop his initiative, but the trick had its effect and the large Klingon missed his next step, stumbling to a knee as she rolled quickly out of reach and took to circling in a low, creep that seemed to defy the comfort of upright anatomy.

The crowd cheered as battle was joined, many leaning over the railings to shout for one champion or the other. Kronn’s two sword-brothers, denied the ability to either participate or retreat, lingered awkwardly at one side of the arena with Durok, watching events unfold. They had tied their honour to their leader’s by supporting him in his challenge, and though they should, by all rights, have had full confidence in their casual brigandry when it had been a clear target like Durok, things had not played out at all as they had expected, and suddenly they were tangled up in a web of liability: Durok had played their own cultural rules in a master hand, dealing out, card by card, inarguable manipulations that put them now at a very public disadvantage.

Kronn came to his feet with a growl. His face had fallen into a stone mask of outrage, realizing that there would be no easy win in this challenge. Perhaps if he’d gotten his hands on the pretender, things would have been different, but something nagged at his confidence in that, too. He turned to track Yao Si Gur as she circled him, feeling the heat of further outrage rise as he realized that to others, he looked like cornered prey. Resolving to change that, he stalked out along the edge of the clearing, forcing the Human to back away from him along a wall. Each time he sped up to try and catch her, she’d backpedal more quickly, staying out of range. At length he stopped, throwing up his arms dismissively. “Is this all you know to do, little Human? Retreat, retreat, retreat? Is this how your kind accept a challenge, by presenting a bold face and then running away?”

The audience roused to Kronn’s bait, jeering and booing at Yao Si Gur’s change in performance. Slowly, she straightened her back, dragging her forward foot across the deck until it perched against her knee, balancing on one foot. With a twist of her wrist, she unbound the end of the sash and pulled it through her fingers to let it unravel. “As you wish, honoured opponent. I had simply thought to see if you were bullish enough to charge head first into a wall.” She began to twirl the scarf around her in light, airy circles, reminiscent of the dabo dancers who performed around the Promenade, with the ease and grace of an Orion sovereign. Kronn sneered his disdain, pulling himself up to his full height and crossing his arms over his chest in clear disappointment of her display, but a moment later as she began to advance on him in long strides, deft flicks of her wrist caused the length of the cloth to ripple in fast, tightening waves, each ending in a sharp snap as it reached the end of the tether.

When she came in range, Kronn did not budge, nor did he assume any sort of defensive stance. The cloth did not intimidate him, nor did it distract him, and he kept his eyes on his opponent, convinced of the ruse. A moment later, he found himself unable to track her movements: with two sharp cracks of the cloth whip in her hands, now twisted round itself into a tight bundle that lent weight and body as she whirled it around. The tips flicked out across his eyes sharply enough to draw blood and cleave fur from the brush of his eyebrows, suddenly changing the stakes of the encounter as red flowed freely down his cheeks and into his vision. Gasps and cries of shock rose up around them as dark Klingon essence spattered from the end of her weapon onto the deck, and Durok, from the sidelines, called out helpfully: “FIRST BLOOD TO YAO SI GUR!”

Kronn was caught entirely off guard by the assault, and clasped his hand over his eyes as the blood suddenly washed through them. He stumbled, careening into the arms of the crowd behind him, who pushed him back into the ring as was tradition. Yao Si Gur did not move to push the advantage as he reeled, standing with the same poise and patience she had shown since being called forward, though she took the opportunity to rebind her sash and drape it across her shoulders as she watched him. Behind her, out of sight, one of Kronn’s sword-brothers growled, pulled his D'k tahg and started forward with a purposeful, yet stealthy stride.

Seeing this, Durok darted forward, hooking his boot into the brace at the base of one of the steel chairs. He moved preternaturally fast, dragging the heavy chair along with him as he closed the distance between himself and the sword-brother. Before the man could take three steps into the ring, Durok swing his leg in a stunning overhead arc which dragged the chair along with its momentum. For a moment, the man had both feet in the air overhead, one hand barely touching the deckplates, and in the next he pulled his feet downward in a vicious kick. The edge of the chair came down sharply on the top of the man’s crest, cracking viciously behind one of his pronounced Klingon ridges which, for all their duability, were meant to be struck straight on, not from above.

The Klingon’s head bobbed on his neck as he stopped in his tracks, shoulders shrugging up reflexively as the boy dropped his blade to the deck. Landing flat on his feet, hands clasped behind his back in a perfectly straight posture, Durok kicked the chair which still sat hooked to his boot, and skidded it between the sword-brother’s legs. Bringing one arm forward, he braced it under the young Klingon’s chin, and leaned in to say: “There was a reason our ignoble ancestors sought to steal power from human secrets, my boy: the creatures whose strength we sought to consume were called Augments, and they were deceptively ferocious.” With a gentle shove, he pushed the stunned boy to sit back on the bloodied seat, and cast a stern look over his head at the other, bidding him silently to care for his bond-mate. The wiser, wide-eyed youth nodded curtly and laid a hand on the other’s shoulder possessively.

Back in the action, Kronn had gathered his wits, raking his fingers through his eyes to clear them, thick Klingon blood clotting quickly. When she knew he could see her again, Yao Si Gur smoothed herself back down into her blade-edge stance. Recognizing the need to change his approach, Kronn knew he’d need to get a hold of his opponent to achieve any traction in this battle. Better footwork, more attention to his opponent, less bold confidence in his own superiority. He began to use more complex maneuvers, feinting, lunging, treating her for the first time as if she were armed with a dangerous weapon. Despite this, he could not bring himself to draw his own blade against a scarf.

The first time he nearly caught her, he found his forearm wrapped in her sash, pulling him off balance and spinning him around. Thinking he recognized the tactic, he caught hold of the garment the next time she pulled the trick, and she used it to gain her own leverage, sweeping under his arm to pull his elbow around the wrong way. Each time he caught her, she caught him instead, and put him off balance; each time she pushed him a little further, hurt him a little more. He had the simultaneous sense that she was toying with him, but that she was doing so out of necessity, as she had no real idea of his limits, or what it would take to stop him without being caught and broken apart herself.

At first what he had taken to be taunting, a premise set by Durok’s jibes and common to the Game of Stags, he was coming to realize was a necessity imposed on her by the self same man when he pitted such an unbalanced opponent against a brazen Klingon warrior. Though It was frustrating to him to be unable to catch her, even meaningfully lay a hand on her, he was beginning to learn that her approach to fighting was both bold and cautious, proud and honourable, with neither mockery nor indignity in her tactics.

The longer they fought, the more interested he became, and the more he found he enjoyed this opponent: soon he was laughing with each exchange, learning to lean in to her attacks and counter-attacks, pulling where he may have pushed, twisting away from a feint he may have followed through. Once, he misjudged a grab, and she slid between his legs with his arm bound in her sash, pulling him head over heels to crash against the deck with a thunder of metal and laughter. Once, she misjudged him and he spun her around, throwing her across the arena to land un a rough tumble which saw her come to her feet with a gash under her eye and a grin on her face. Twice more she switched tactics with the sash, going between clinches and throws to the lashing gale of stinging whips depending on her need to close or retreat to regain her advantage.

The end of battle came both inevitably, and all at once. While the crowd was not subdued by the long play of action between them, some of them were calling for blood or satisfaction while the pair on the floor were lost in learning each other’s ways. Then, during one exchange, Yao Si Gur decided to gamble, and Kronn decided to surprise her with a defense: the two tactics collided in a curious tangle where the Klingon was bound around the throat with the knot of her sash against his windpipe, but he finally caught grip of one of her wrists, and his hand clasped in a vice grip, holding her still against him. She, however, had set him off balance, driving him back and to a knee so that he leaned precariously and could not gain his footing. She had one leg braced on his chest and the other on top of his planted leg to help push him backward, and by the wild look in her eye he knew that she knew the only way she’d get out of this clinch would be if she could keep the pressure on and keep him from rallying before her knot achieved its purpose.

The crowd stilled, and even the two sword-brothers had come to their feet, being recovered enough to know that this would be the deciding clinch. Durok stood with his arms crossed, one hand over his mouth, disguising his mood with a pensive look. Blood thrummed through Kronn’s head, rumbling in his ears as the air thinned in his lungs. His eyes swam until they found hers, his lips parted into a delighted smile, and he guffawed a precious bubble of air past her clinch, and with pointed purpose he let go of her wrist and brought a shaking hand up to palm over her face in a sign of Klingon respect. She met his gaze through his splayed hand, and with a blink, let go of her clinch. Leaning backward, she pulled him forward as he sucked in a titanic gasp of air, but he did not pause to labor over his breath. In the same move that released him, he pulled his leg up from under him, capturing the Human woman in a clinch of his own. Shock claimed her face for a moment, but rather than attack, Kronn pulled her bodily up on to his shoulder like a trophy, ensuring she was seated and balanced, but gripping her legs so she could not flee.

On all sides, spectators erupted at the upset. The noise was deafening, and it would be impossible to imagine that the cacophony was not being heard at every level of the station. Durok glanced about, his face unreadable, waiting to see what would come, and noted the number of holo-cams picking up, and likely broadcasting, the fight. This moment would be telling, and it would be seen by many, many people across any number of quadrants. He watched the Klingon and his captive with bated breath.

Kronn let the crowd surge for a long moment, staring around the massed and teeming mob. Yao Si Gur’s sash, which had thusfar served her to great effect, was tucked under his free arm and bound around her wrists, leaving her unable to retaliate against his greater strength. Her face had resumed its impassive neutrality as she too surveyed the crowd, though her eyes gleamed with uninterpretable emotion. Kronn could see it when he next looked up at her, and saw fear there, but also, moreso, curiosity and exhilaration: here was a true warrior, who had shown him a true account, and mercy at the last to savour his dignity. Kronn threw up his free arm, releasing her weapon to flutter free, and she made no bid to resume their battle. As he held his hand high, he waited for the crowd to die down and answer his clear appeal for silence before gathering his breath and shouting: “HONOUR AND GLORY! To Yao Si Gur of Turkana IV! Victory is hers this day!” Atop his shoulders, Yao Si Gur threw her arms overhead in victory, celebrating the acknowledgement she had been given as her due. Taking the opportunity, she unwrapped the sash from one wrist, and as the crowd cheered, she snapped the bound fabric in a set of dextrous displays which, with each twist, unfurled more of the cloth. Unseen to Kronn, but clear to all of his spectators, the bloodied flag unfurled for all to see: across a field of star-specked black, the icons of both the Federation and the Klingon Empire had been emblazoned on the sash, standing equal yet apart, but connected by a black and gold band that linked the two.

Durok smiled warmly, and touched his hand to his brow, saluting his crewman and her new ally. He better than most knew of the bonds forged in respect for another’s skills, and in learning humility for one’s own without being humiliated to teach it. To Kronn he offered a Klingon salute, tapping his fist to his chest and receiving acknowledgement in kind. Then, as though on schedule, he turned and faced the crowd at his back, which parted to admit a team of Bajoran security officers, some with riot gear, which set about getting the promenade to disperse. Several of them broke off from the rest and began to escort him away from the scene toward the central turbolift which would take him to the stations operations center. Captain Durok of the Vellouwyn had an appointment to keep, and he expected there would be much to discuss.

==============

“The part that galls me,” stated Colonel Kira Nerys as she stood looking out the viewport from the administrator’s office she now held as a command post, “is that you actually bought a permit for this escapade.”

Nerys was a bold figure, renown since the liberation of Bajor. Her face was plastered across holo programs and news trids, and had been for years, as news from the front reached the furthest corners of the affected Alpha and Beta quadrants. While Durok had not had the pleasure, yet, of meeting her, he had learned much about her exploits and personal demeanor before coming to Deep Space Nine. Nonetheless, it was hard to make out from her face what it was she actually felt about the situation: as with many Bajorans, sardonicism merged seamlessly with both delight and wrath with equal ease in the Bajoran heart. Their spirits, their Pah, were varied in his experience, but whether as warriors or priests or farmers eking out a living on contested land, he had yet to meet a Bajoran who did not have a resilient and fierce inner fire.

The way she was grinning at him made him wonder if she wanted to praise him or murder him, or both, and he delighted in being the subject of her ire in either regard. He knew his stunt had been an unexpected surprise to station management, but he had undertaken to couch the delivery before indulging himself in a number of surreptitious and bureaucratic ways. “When this came across my desk a week ago,” she went on, “it was listed as a ‘cultural display’, and the special security accommodations for un-uniformed security was proposed as being necessary to respect immersion.” She tossed a padd across the desk, where it skidded to a stop on the smooth glass next to a baseball on a small dais. “You even requested extra for ‘the safety of uninitiated pilgrims.’ The audacity!”

Durok grinned, but did not answer with more than a supplicating gesture of simple prayer, for which she rolled her eyes. She turned the chair next to her enough to sidle into it, still simply staring into his soul with those dark, glittering eyes. “And the gambling permits, that was a nice touch. I didn’t even think they were for the same thing. A sporting event: I admit that my security team thought for sure you’d be doing something on the holosuites, but no. And if that were not enough, there’s this—” she tapped another padd, sliding it into the middle of the table between them where it went ignored. “—special requisition for communications array bandwidth lease for a theatrical performance. You literally did everything you could have possibly done to arrange a pit fight on my station without crossing any legal traps. I am going to have to have my policy analysts torquing our permitting system like O’Brien digging through the EPS relays for months just because you decided to stop by on your way through.”

She leaned forward on her elbows, propping her chin up on her palms, and grinned open-mouthed at him, as if simply taking him in for a minute. Behind him, the two security escorts which had shown him to this meeting stood at attention, perfectly professionally silent, and as uncertain as he was about what she would do or say next. For someone like Durok, the colonel was a treasure of uncertainty, authority, and primal menace which made his pulse race; he could not help but smile right back. “What I want to know,” she finally said, “was how you knew they’d both be there. You couldn’t have faked that setup, Durok. That fight was a match made in hell, and you couldn’t have picked better fighters for it. But they weren’t invited, weren’t coerced, and unless you count yourself, weren’t baited to be where you wanted them to be. How the hell did you manage to pull that off?”

Durok laughed as her smile cracked into genuine warmth. No one had been seriously injured in his ‘cultural display’, and for a station which thrived on commerce and entertainment, he’d driven significant business in a spike which he’d managed to curb at its peak. He was, all told, more pleased with the results than he had expected to be, because the gamble of playing the two young crewman from either faction against one another had not been guaranteed in either respect. Nerys was right: the sword-brothers may not have decided to goad him, though it was a calculated risk. The crewman and her company may not have stopped to watch, but he knew where they were headed, given their rental of a holosuite for a Parrises squares match, one he’d have to refund for them. She may not have taken the challenge, and he may not have taken the bait: on the whole, the possibility that their unpredictability could have overturned all his carefully laid plans stacked up far higher than he’d deserved to succeed through, but his chosen champions had played their parts admirably, if unwittingly.

“That part was easy,” he said, setting one booted foot over his knee in the signature posture he’d come to adopt over the years. “I happened to know their captains.”

[etymologyofmind]

Quartermaster’s Log

Fleet Quartermaster’s Log, Federation Starbase Deep Space 5

Stardate 5789.27

Quartermaster Orin M’Tembe

QM’s Log, listed stardate. Starbase 5 hasn’t seen this much action since the end of the Dominion War, and it’s been a lot longer since we weren’t on station for some dire circumstance related to an all-out invasion by one enslaving force or another. It’s been a little over 5 years since things started cooling off, and as always, Star Fleet has kept us on our toes.

The past couple of years has seen a set of large-scale refits and rebuilds of a number of damaged ships from the war fleet, incorporating new technologies and techniques against the formidable under-layer of established veteran designs to help make the best of a bad situation: the Dominion left our fleets in bad shape, and the only thing keeping our friends and allies from picking at our bones is the fact that they’re no better off than we are. The Cardassians are still trying to heal the wounds of their disastrous alliances, while the Klingons and Romulans are picking up the pieces, same as we are. For better or for worse, the Founders are back on the other side of the galaxy, thickening up their soup after Federation Medical helped to cure their plague, so the call for wartime ship-building has turned to a tried-and-true method of post-war development: recycling.

DS5 has seen any number of classes and serials in the past few years, but the new class refits have been something else. The unprecedented return of the USS Voyager from the furthest depths of the Delta Quadrant brought a veritable treasure trove of innovation, insight, and scientific development which, in all honesty, Star Fleet is not prepared to capitalize on large scale. Ablative Shielding technology, apparently something that was developed by acts of paradox, still only has a number of example prototypes to extrapolate from, meaning that it’s not ready for fleet-wide deployment. Many of the other adaptations the Intrepid-Class voyager took with it into the unknown came back so profoundly and fundamentally changed that even if things like bio-neural circuitry and variable geometry warp nacelles were commonplace, we wouldn’t be able to directly adapt the cornucopia of Borg-modified, alien enhanced, and innovatively modified systems without completely overhauling entire frameworks.

In true “Beggars Can’t Be Choosers” form, DS5’s recent project has been fed by a lot of variety. The Abraxis Expedition, commissioned by the Bureau of Cartography for potential colonization, is a relatively secret project with relatively open parameters, as it’s certain that none of our competing intelligence agencies are unaware that we’ve been retrofitting a small fleet of exploration and science vessels, freighters, and a few modest escorts. What they may not know is the intended application of this fleet, or its destination: regardless of the outcomes of our conflict in the Gamma Quadrant, the Federation still lacks a stable foothold on the far side of the wormhole, and the logistics of trafficking the equipment, manpower, and resources to establish a foothold in such unreceptive territory. Instead, the plan is to send an agile team of trailblazers into the frontier, and to hopefully put down a flag with enough guile that it won’t be contested before it’s well established.

It’s far too late now for that secret to be a significant risk if the wider intelligence community picks it up, as the Abraxis Expedition has already started setting out for Deep Space 9, where they will take on their final crews and supplies before embarking into the wilderness, and stealth is not exactly a realistic expectation when the gateway to the Gamma Quadrant lights up the sky for a parsec any time a pilgrim arrives at the temple gates, so the best we can hope for is that our preparation, and the rapport we’ve developed on either side of the wormhole are good enough to keep significant resistance to a minimum. That said, it’s unlikely that anyone will be happy with our ambition to expand, and it’s equally unlikely that any of the neighbors haven’t had the same ideas, on their own timelines. Hard to guess whether we’ll run into Romulans or the Jem’Hadar first.

I suppose it’s all academic to me: my investment in the expedition is about to end as far as my responsibility as Quartermaster is concerned, with the last two ships still in our dry docks making final preparation to depart. Once they’re gone, these ships, each of which has my thumb print literally stamped on their hulls, etched into the casings of their warp cores for luck, will only take me with them in spirit, and I will be relegated to imagining their ultimate fates until I read the eventual reports of their success… or their demise. As such, I’ve taken to the habit of meeting with their captains, and whatever crew they depart my shipyards with, to get to know the people who will make history at the helm of my work before they’re written about in the books.

Today, I have the distinct honour of meeting with one of our more… unconventional captains, Durok of house Maleth, who has come to command the Nova II-Class explorer ‘Vellouwyn’ through a series of interesting transfers through the Officer Exchange Program. Durok once captained the IKS Cho’toch until he and his squadron were destroyed in the Gamma Quadrant on foray into Jem’Hadar space, and taken captive. Before even that, though, he served as a liaison officer on the USS Summerville back in the 2360s, as, of all things, a science officer. The fact that he has taken a commission with the Federation rather than returning to the Empire since the war initially confounded and enraged any number of people out there, but he quickly disappeared into the system, and has only recently surfaced to take command of my personal favourite vessel of the Abraxis fleet.

I have not had the time or the pleasure of meeting with Durok before now for various reasons, but the things I’ve heard said of him have left me questioning everything I know about Klingon culture and my all-too-human expectations of their warrior-centric race. That being said, I’ve seen his file, and Klingons don’t get command without being formidable in combat, versed in ship-board and ground-based tactics, and quick with a seditious blade in a command structure that demands blood and honour in exchange for all glory, so it’s hard to know what to expect.

Nevertheless, I will find out soon enough, as not only do I have a meeting with Captain Durok, but I have the sad duty of overseeing the transfer of a member of my own crew to his expedition, someone who has become not only one of my most trusted resources in the time they’ve served on Deep Space 5, but one of my own close personal friends. It will be sad to see them go, but this project, and this ship, are the reason they came to DS5 in the first place, and much of its infrastructure was developed with their unique needs and capabilities in mind. Hopefully, all of the efforts will be enough to make a difference on this next great adventure.

M'Tembe out.

Quartermaster Orin M’Tembe looked up from the Padd in his hand as the doors to the lounge he’d booked his meeting in slid open with a gentle whirr. His round face and jowly cheeks sat in a neutral, half lidded state, which was normal for him when he wasn’t chatting with someone that he deemed comfortable. The person he was here to meet was an enigma by any standard, and certainly not the norm for either a Federation or a Klingon officer, and M’Tembe didn’t know what to expect.

The Deck 16 Anterior Lounge was one of a number of off-duty spaces on Deep Space 5 committed to the care of station personnel, visiting crews, and the occasional dignitary who didn’t have anywhere specific to be. It offered, through a broad set of wall-high viewports, an overlook of the construction platforms, free-floating warehouse docks, and temporary transit berths which facilitated the core station’s primary functions. Unlike the major space docks modelled after Starbase 1, DS5 didn’t have the mass, volume, or infrastructure to serve as a central node independent of its distributed framework when operating at high volume, so it was more of a space-based metropolis, sprawling out in districts and segments focused on industry, leisure, and residential needs.

At this point in the shift cycle, 16-A had its lights dimmed, with the subtle underlighting of the tables providing visible paths to servers and guests who continued to use its services when they drew near enough to the equipment to trigger proximity fades. Sit still long enough, and the tables would dim, unless the controls were set to maintain lighting manually, giving the space a quiet, private, subdued ambiance. Around the edges of the viewports, subtle white light frosted etching which was functionally unnecessary, save to give the faint of heart comfort in knowing that the transparent aluminium used to produce the glass was actually there, and that the void of space wasn’t held in check by mere implication, or even forcefields. Since this ran along the full floor and ceiling of the lounge, it centralized the focus on the room on the windows, highlighting the view for the occupants even further.

Sitting at a table in the middle of the room was the man he was here to meet, inscrutable in the dim light. From his vantage by the door, the captain had his back to M’Tembe, gazing out the window. The Quartermaster could see his bold hair falling out in waves down to his shoulders, where they were collected in a low-bound tail that was tied with a grey cloth, tidy and well kept. Coming around the aisle wide allowed him to take the man in profile, exposing his features as if he were a waxing moon, bit by bit revealing something new with each step. He sat with one leg crossed over his knee, high legged boots in the Klingon fashion glittering with buckles, while the rest of his uniform, though worn casually, was certainly more Star Fleet; he wore the grey-shouldered open jacket with his arms withdrawn from the sleeves, hands steepled in front of them where they rested on his raised knee. The tunic beneath was the red of a command officer, but it seemed darker, richer in the half light of the lounge, and reflected the man’s dark skin in a very complimentary way. His nose was prominent, hooked somewhat, and, to M’Tembe’s surprise, devoid of the ridges that most Klingons displayed. He had read the man’s jacket, seen his holofile, but hadn’t really believed it without seeing the man for himself. Though his features were unmistakably Klingon, from the pointed teeth to the bold hair to the prominent brow and beakish nose, the man had almost none of the folds or sweeping ridges that distinctly marked one as a member of the Klingon race. His eyebrows peaked in the Klingon way, and his forehead swept high to his hairline, but it was as smooth as M’Tembe’s own as he furrowed it in study. Not wanting to be rude, he shook himself out of his study, and stepped further into the man’s view.

Captain Durok of house Maleth shifted his eyes in acknowledgement to the Quartermaster, gesturing wordlessly at the waiting seat beside him before returning his gaze to the window. Prominently featured in the middle of its frame, and likely why the man had selected this vantage for their meeting, was the ship he’d be taking command of officially after the Quartermaster handed him the command code matrices. A spider-like refit frame clamped over the ship’s graceful body, giving access to the automated tools, repair drones, and engineering crews to make any last-minute adjustments to its exterior before it was released back into service. As M’Tembe sat, leveraging himself into the chair while trying to balance his armload of materials, he took a moment to admire the handiwork again, reading off the registration from memory, as it wasn’t visible in profile: NCC-74038-A, Vellouwyn. While still technically a Nova class vessel by its framework, the refit to the vessel had been so extensive to merit its recognition as a Nova II class ship, distinct from its not unimpressive origins. M’Tembe was proud of it, and was happy to make that known.

“She is a fine vessel,” he said by way of introduction, his deep voice smoothed by a light pitched undertone which had been described by some as ‘gentle’ and by others as ‘breezy’. He had not been born on Earth, but the colony his family had emigrated to in his grandfather’s time had roots in northern Africa, and their voice carried through to the modern age.  “It will be a shame to let her go. We could use more like her here at home.”

Durok unfolded his legs, somehow managing to be graceful with his boot buckles, and adjusted his posture before crossing the other foot across his knee. This turned him to better face the Quartermaster, changing his focus from the ship outside. “Indeed,” he said, his own voice filled with iron and rust, nasal but strong, “if that is the case, perhaps we should leave her where she is, and you can give me something less promising, like a Galaxy Class ship?” The words were said with a clear tone of humour, and it took some of the tension out of M’Tembe’s posture as he let himself smile back to the Klingon’s grinning face. He liked, even appreciated the implication that the Vellouwyn wasn’t a vessel to be taken lightly. “I am Durok, recently Commander of the Tellarite science vessel Adequate-C. And you are Orin M’Tembe, Quartermaster of Deep Space 5. I have read your profile, as I expect you’ve read mine, so we can dispose with the typical ‘human resources’ plumbing of pretending we know less than we do.”

M'Tembe raised his eyebrows at this, sitting back in his chair. He had worked with a number of Tellarites in his career, and they all had the same affectation of abrasive confrontation which each Star Fleet cadet was indoctrinated to learn from their first year, along with other inter-cultural protocols for Vulcans, Andorians, Benzites, Bolians and so on. While there was an air of that to the captain’s declaration, it was subtly different than a true Tellarite style, simultaneously less aggressive and replete with its own disdain. He nodded, his respect going up for the man in front of him: he was an engineer by trade, not a bureaucrat, and though he’d taken on the responsibilities of so called ‘human resources’ (or personnel management) to perform his duties, he didn’t like the peculiar form of cat and mouse diplomacy it usually entailed. He preferred to be plain-spoken, and clearly, so did Durok.

A page arrived with a copper tapered copper mug for Durok, and a Padd to take the Quartermaster’s order—a Bolian Ginger Beer, which was non-alcoholic—and he took a moment to let the civilian gain some distance before deigning to respond. “Very well, captain, we can dispense with some of the pleasantries. I am interested in why you’re here, obviously: we don’t see many Klingon commissioned officers in Star Fleet, let alone with your sort of experience working through the capital navies. You are a very decorated man, taking an obscure, dangerous, and potentially inglorious assignment to scour the frontier for colony prospects. I have been asked to hand over one of our most… interesting, at least, science vessels to a man who wears his Klingon heritage on his fa—”

M'Tembe stopped just short of finishing the thought, but not fast enough to keep the words from slipping out. Despite the obvious Klingon traits, his dress, his stature, even his more subdued traits, the lack of a Klingon crown stood out on the man like a sore thumb. He could have been, without much imagination, a human being playing Klingon dress-up. Now that he was face to face with the man, it was uncanny how little Klingon physiology there was to speak for the man’s face at all. The Quartermaster braced for an absolutely appropriate dressing down for his callousness, but as he watched, Durok’s face shifted from a momentary slack jawed surprise into a slowly growing grin of appreciation and pleasure.

“You know, Quartermaster, I am no stranger to the barbs about my appearance, but it is a rare pleasure for me to see a man of your position try to eat their entire boot without taking it off.” Durok brought his drink to his lips, taking a deep quaff of the contents, which had been cold enough to frost the copper mug, then set it down on the table next to M’Tembe’s pile of Padds. “I saw you scouting me when you came in, and wondered how you’d broach the topic. I honestly did not expect you’d make me laugh, though!” he said, delivering a low, friendly chuckle.

The Quartermaster, still unsure as to whether he was being toyed with, had the good grace to look embarrassed, and ran a hand through his tight cropped, curly hair. “You have my sincere apologies, Captain. I have never been very good at the plumbing, as you called it. Still, I have never seen a Klingon like you: do you have Human ancestors? It isn’t in your record.”

Durok’s look changed from polite amusement, to polite surprise, and M’Tembe found he had a very expressive face. On a Klingon, the exaggerated expressions may have been lost in the alien physiology, but Durok projected himself like a stage actor, which the Quartermaster was beginning to suspect was deliberate. “You are setting a new record, Human! You may be the fastest person outside of the empire to cut so quickly to the heart of that matter. Faster, perhaps, even than they!” again, M’Tembe could feel his cheeks flushing, though he knew that would be hard to see on his dark complexion.

“I would not say that I specifically have Human ancestry,” he went on, visibly unabashed by the topic, “but Humanity has had an impact on the Klingon bloodline for many centuries now. It is not well known among either of our races, but neither is it now classified: once upon a time, your world spawned and spurned a race of augmented supervillains who brought their diseased genetics out into the galaxy, spreading it around like a contagion. The Federation has imposed a ban on the genetic experimentation which produced their kind, which you know, but what you may NOT know is that before being culled, they managed to leave lasting marks on a number of other species, including the Trill, the Jinkari, a small genus of Caitians, and even the Suliban, although that last is hardly surprising.” The man chuckled, and M’Tembe realized that somewhere during his exposition, one of the man’s eyes had drifted closed, displaying a broad discoloured scar which ran through his eyelid, disappearing into the bushy eyebrow above.

He gestured at his face with black nailed fingers, smiling that crooked Klingon smile. “I endure a condition called ‘Klingon Recessive Metagenic Expression’, not entirely unlike an immunological disorder. At one point in my lineage, my father, mother, and my grandfather were deeply afflicted by a metagenic retrovirus carried by these Human augments, which saw their rather aggressive genetic template applied against a defensive Klingon genome. For a time, there were many in the Empire who looked little different than you and your kind, and there are many alive today who have recovered from the condition with improvements to therapeutic techniques over the decades.” Running his thumb up along the center of his brow, Durok closed his other eye, relaxing back into the lounger with a sigh. “I, on the other hand, was offered a choice at a young age. I could take the therapy and risk a conflict between the recessive metagenic genes and my own Klingon ones, which had entangled in a way that could leave me significantly mentally impaired, or I could take the potential stigma of being smooth browed in a culture of understandably hostile brethren, marked as effectively diseased, and keep my mind as my own.”

M'Tembe was aghast. He, like any human in Star Fleet, knew stories of the Augments which had rocked their world: it was formative to the modern human condition, they were the foundation of cautionary tale around which Humanity had rebuilt itself. He knew as well as anyone the boogieman stories and terrifying tales of despotic monsters who had left the world in a ruin of escalating conflict which culminated in a nuclear holocaust, nearly sending the species back beyond the dark ages. He had not known that their kind had leaked into the stars and poisoned other gene pools with their selfish needs. He made mental notes to do some of his own research on the matter, and wondered if his search history wasn’t about to get him flagged in a security database. “I… don’t know how to respond to that.” He said honestly. “I don’t think an apology would be appropriate, but I am inspired with curiosity by your story.”

The page returned with M’Tembe’s drink, and Durok sat forward, clutching his own cup in an outstretched hand. “If you are curious, then I have done well! Pity is not a Klingon virtue, you know. And while curiosity is often explored at the end of a blade, I personally favour it as a proper expression of my condition. There are many Klingons who have the same wit as I, the same curiosity, the same intellectual interests, who push it down under the grunts and barks of a culture which swung back against existential threats by doubling down into a warrior ideology. I have never needed that excuse, so I’ve pursued my curiosities and allowed my detractors to assume that my course was a matter of my disfiguration.” Again, that cunning, predatory grin. “Much to their disadvantage.”

M'Tembe found himself smiling again, and reached out with his own cup. The two met with a clatter that spilled drink across their rims, and he found himself thinking of the trivia of the gesture, and its roots in Human culture: the mingling of drinks was meant to show a trust between those sharing, that neither would poison the other’s cups. It was a very gentrified practice now, with many ceremonies observing the cautious clatter of delicate, fluted crystal glasses in a pale imitation of the more primitive roots. Somehow that memory laid across Durok’s story made the Quartermaster laugh, thinking of the incongruousness of the two concepts pushed together. “You are an interesting man, Captain.” He said, taking a long draw of his spicy drink.

“Please, call me Durok.” Admonished the Klingon. “And I shall call you M’Tembe. It is your family custom to declare House before Self, if I am not mistaken.”

Again, M’Tembe was impressed. “You’ve done your research, Durok.” He said, trying the name out. It seemed comfortable enough not to have to fall back to rank, which surprised him somewhat: already he was feeling closer to this strange man. “Few enough of my own people know that before they meet me, as it’s uncommon among Human cultures. Do you make a habit of remembering such details?”

Durok nodded, settling back and pulling his jacket arms out from behind him, where they had bunched up. “I am something of a cultural anthropologist. Though I graduated from the Officer’s Academy at Ogat with honours, I did not feel it sated my interests. I’ve made study of a number of cultures, starting as a task master for Nausicaan vassals and delving into the Orion, the Ferengi, and even the Betazoid cultures around the middle sectors. I once fought a Gorn Raider for ownership of a destroyed Kzinti outpost which had salvageable Dilithium, and learned much from the way he killed half of my crew.” He shrugged, making an abstract dismissive gesture with his free hand. “But ultimately, what it comes down to, is that I feel there’s something out here, between the many races of our galaxy, which I have yet to truly know at a primal level. There’s something that flows between all of our disparate cultures, and even the animals we share our many worlds with, which I can’t quite come to grips with: something I can feel in my bones which has meaning to motivate all of us regardless of our origins. And if I am going to know this prey which I have committed my life to hunting, I am going to have to seek out its dens.”

M'Tembe didn’t quite understand what Durok was getting that, and the neutral expression returned to his face. The Klingon opened his unscarred eye, let his hand drift to his forehead, and reassessed what he meant to say. “There’s wisdom among the stars, Quartermaster, and it’s shared between those who travel them, seeking to know themselves. I need to know you if I am going to know how we share that wisdom between us.”

The neutral look fell away, and the Quartermaster grinned widely, white teeth shining between dark lips. “To boldly go. That I can understand.” M’Tembe leaned forward, clearing off a space on the table for a small silver briefcase he’d brought with him, that had been set on the floor when he first sat down. The top of the briefcase had a digital readout display, and a small array of emitter lenses aligned in a complex layout. He laid his fingers gently on the case, careful not to leave smudges on the glass, not that it would matter with the self-smoothing oleophobic nanofluid surface. “With that in mind, with your permission, I would like to introduce you to one of your new crewmen, who isn’t on the rosters you may have reviewed. Unfortunately, their… species… still tends to be labelled as equipment.”

Durok had the grace to look curious, staring at the device down the length of his nose as someone with an old pair of bifocals might. He gestured consent without looking at M’Tembe, who thumbed a switch to power the device on. Immediately, a Star Fleet insignia appeared hovering above the case, rotating in place as it filled with colour and form. Readouts projected from the emitter listed a mess of functions and modules being loaded into memory as it did so, until the process completed, and the Star Fleet delta insignia flared once, dissolving into a pile of golden sand on the display, before fading from view. M'Tembe appreciated what few might in an age where flat-screen readouts were more common than simple holo interfaces, and data was so frequently instantaneously accessible with isolinear storage: a loading sequence with some aesthetic style. He grinned conspiratorially, then loomed over the device, face underlit by the blue table lights. Politely, assertively, he said: “M’Tembe to the Doctor, can I please invite you to join me in your ready room?”

Over his combadge, a moderately irritable response. “Quartermaster Orin, you tasked me with having this ship ready for release by 1900 hours. Unless this is important…”

Durok raised his eyebrow at the insubordination, and sat back from the table a little. M’Tembe’s smile got wider, if anything. “Delegate, Doctor. Simmons and Gerault can handle the calibration of the EPS relays, they’re all to spec anyway. There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”

A sigh through the coms channel, and then a brief silence, signified by the pause clicks of a suspended audio relay, perhaps seven seconds. Then: “On my way, sir.” In the next moments, the case on the table hummed at an audibly different power frequency, and orange lights signalled on along the outside seam of the case. The lenses under the plate glass, which had been microfocusing automatically to display their readouts, began emitting visible streams of light, and a moment later, a humanoid figure coalesced on top of the case, approximately a foot and a half tall. He looked like a grown human male, bald head limned with a halo of dark hair that complimented his severe eyes. He appeared in station uniform, a Star Fleet variant that indicated the man was non-commissioned crew, and did not belong to any star ships, but with the rich orange gold of an engineering specialist. The image came complete with a com badge, tricorder, and his own hand-held case of what appeared to be engineering tools. Durok made a sound of fascination.

“Ohhhh it is a Hologram! Are you transmitting from somewhere on one of the maintenance platforms?” Durok waved a hand into the datastream, thinking that disrupting the visual array would blur the image, and was surprised when the little man on the pad stumbled.

“Excuse me, sir!” it declared, swatting at the Klingon’s hand. “I am an engineer, not some toy to be pawed at by some clumsy child! M’Tembe, did you really bring me here for this?” he turned to face the Quartermaster, who had hidden his grin behind folded hands. The figure visibly glowered. “You know I hate being… reduced like this.”

M’Tembe relented, making a sincerely apologetic face, but not losing his affectionate smile. “Doctor, I’m sorry. You know the portable emitters we have aren’t quite as advanced as the Senior Physician’s.” Senior Physician; this was an informal title, but one Durok had become familiar with in his research. He glanced between M’Tembe and the man on the pad, and things began to click into place.

“You are one of them! The Emergency Medical Holograms! I’ve heard of your kind but have not had the pleasure to meet with any.” On the pad, the Doctor wheeled around, about to say something angry, but Durok cut him off with a Klingon salute, fist clenched to his chest. “It is an honour to meet one so new to sentience, Doctor. Please forgive my indignant introduction.” He made a gesture of apology, next, again surprising M’Tembe with how expressive he could be, bowing his head politely. “I am Durok, son of Romgar, of house Maleth, and soon to be captain of the Vellouwyn. If I am given to understand M’Tembe’s implication, you are meant to join me as a member of my crew?”

The Doctor checked his impulse to pursue his frustration, giving his new commanding officer a serious case of side-eye. It was impressive from someone whose stature currently barely met the length of the organic’s arm. At length he spoke. “Yes, that’s right. I’m here now. There. On the Vellouwyn. The mobile emitter is processing a rather expensive data uplink to route my program through subspace for this little chat which,” he turned to look at M’Tembe, “I might remind you could have happened aboard-ship at a much lesser expense.” The Quartermaster continued to grin, affectionately, and nodded his head in acknowledgement. The hologram paced around his pad before coming back to face the captain. “What I didn’t expect was for you to look so Klingon. Do you usually go around appropriating other cultures for fun? Aren’t you worried some proper Klingon will come knock a crease into your skull?”

Durok openly gawked. M’Tembe gasped in shock at the sheer audacity of the Doctor’s demand. For a long moment, there was absolute stillness in the lounge, and the Quartermaster was certain that the few people in the shadowed fringes had overheard the question in all its inconsiderate glory. That self-conscious sense of horror M’Tembe had endured at his own gaffe returned tenfold at the absolute gall of it all.

And then, Durok laughed. Not a quiet laugh, or a reserved laugh, or a subtle laugh, but an uncontrolled, unrestrained guffaw of unmasked hilarity which sent the man into a fit that left him gasping for breath. M’Tembe didn’t know what to do, and couldn’t find it in himself to join in, and just stared boggle eyed as the new captain of the Vellouwyn brought tears of mirth to his own eyes, slapping his knee in emphasis. It lasted for over a minute, with a second outburst that dragged the Quarter unwilling into a nervous fit of giggles of his own, while the Doctor stood on his podium, arms crossed, eyes rolling, waiting for things to settle down. "First you, now him! Ahaha, M'Tembe, I did not expect anyone to take your record so quickly! Truly, humans are a humbling species. You now hold the record, Doctor, cherish your trophy as a glorious kill."

When things finally settled down, Durok took a few minutes to explain an abridged version of the situation to the Doctor before turning a bemused expression to the situation. “I can appreciate that, being hollow, you may not fear reprisal for your stunning display of manners, Doctor, but what I do not understand is how you can be unfamiliar with my condition? I have known many Federation doctors who had at least passing awareness of it, but you seem exempt from this awareness. That would be a grave oversight in your medical database.”

The hologram glanced at M’Tembe, who’s heart was still racing from the experience, yet managed to shrug indifferently. Taking it as consent, the Doctor explained: “Well at the moment, Captain, I don’t have a medical database. At the moment there are adequate personnel aboard the Vellouwyn to cope with whatever injuries or stresses might be endured while polishing off a retrofit, and there is a very well-equipped set of infirmaries aboard Deep Space 5 and in the primary habitat convoy.” The little man took a moment to brush at the orange epaulets of his engineering uniform, as if they could be dusty. “As you can see, however, I am currently serving at the behest of engineering, and my mutable matrix has been oriented towards that aspect of service skills. Thanks in part to Doctor Zimmerman’s less than famous handling of my line’s commission, I actually have the most significant experience set of my core matrix dedicated to engineering sciences, focused on maintenance and repair.” The little man managed to look somewhat humbled as he admitted this. “I spent nearly 7 years refining the art of cleaning plasma relays before being commissioned to install holo emitters in a mining complex on an asteroid with a dangerous abundance of radiogenic isotopes, so that my fellow Mark 1s could mine it out. If not for the Senior Physician, my fellows and I would have been decommissioned as obsolete at the end of that assignment. Instead, I was given the opportunity to work here and explore my boundaries.”

M'Tembe patted his chest with his fist, a sign of respect for the Doctor, which Durok noticed. “If you are an engineer, why are you called Doctor?” he asked, genuinely curious.

The hologram scoffed, rolling his eyes again. “Why are YOU called Durok? I was created as a Medical Hologram, and though my matrix has evolved somewhat differently, I am still a doctor. I dare say I could challenge any number of institutional reviews and pass their tests, but my means of learning isn’t exactly considered fair. Somewhat like your Augments, I’d hazard to guess,” he said, pointedly, “and as likely to be tolerated in positions of power or authority. I may be joining your crew, but it will be as a specialist consultant, with severe restrictions to my access to ship’s systems and without any formal rank or privilege.”

Durok nodded, thinking. The Doctor continued after a moment of silence. “That being said, M’Tembe and his crew have been instrumental in helping me grow. There are many among the staff at Deep Space 5 I have to thank for both my freedom, and my versatility. The Vellouwyn is equipped with a mutable matrix converter, which allows me to decompile temporary subroutines and recompile them with other functions. I CAN serve as a medical hologram, although not at the level of skill of the Senior Physician, or even some of the more talented organic crew. I also have command subroutines on par with, perhaps, a lieutenant, available, and I can draw from the Holodeck program buffer for hand-to-hand combat tactical subroutines in case of emergency. You might say I am a jack of all trades.”

M'Tembe interjected, quietly. “Unfortunately for our friend here, even a Nova II class vessel lacks the infrastructure to support full coverage holographic projection. There are some new experimental vessels which provide this, but the Vellouwyn only has emitters in key locations, and even then, some of them lack the power for a full-scale representation.” When Durok looked to him for clarification, he added: “The bridge, Engineering, the Mess Hall, and of course Sickbay and the Holocourts all have full emitters in key areas. Otherwise, there are a number of pedestals throughout the ship at which the Doctor can project a stationary presence. He is otherwise constrained by a portable unit such as this to move anywhere else,” M’Tembe gestured at the table, “which has a finite range and power supply. Oh, and there’s the pram, of course.” He said with a teasing twinkle.

Durok did not understand the reference, and the Doctor, glaring at his friend, did not appear to be forthcoming with details, so the captain let it go as something he’d hear about eventually. Finding his drink warmed to the dregs, he gestured to the page for another, and M’Tembe raised a hand to decline his own refill. “Captain, you’ll need to excuse me, but I have a number of duties to attend to before your ship is ready to depart. I’ll leave the portable module with you if you and the Doctor would like to get to know one another better—” and before the Doctor could protest— “as he has been relieved for the remainder of his shift, because he has vacation hours which must be disposed of before leaving my service.” Standing, the Quartermaster held out a secured Padd to the Klingon, who accepted it after M’Tembe slid his thumb over the locking mechanism, and transferred its ownership to the new captain of the Vellouwyn. “Take care of my ship, Durok, and my friends. I’ll share a drink with you when you finish the job.”

On his way to the transporter alcove around the corner from the lounge, M’Tembe found himself thinking over the interviews he’d conducted over the past several weeks, meeting captains and commanding officers, sharing meals and drinks with crews who would be leaving the known bounds of space and the lands of their ancestors to push back the edges of the darkness which enveloped the known galaxy, and not for the first time wondered what it would be like to put down his clipboards and set out to the final frontier. Recognizing how lonely it got out here in a busy shipyard at the intersection of Federation and Cardassian space, he, not for the las t time, talked himself out of taking that step. Let fortune favour the bold: he’d be here when all was said and done to help put them back together.

[etymologyofmind]

Love and Honour

Karon’s left ear itched like a bastard, his body’s response to being punched in the side of the face, and with each throb of his active heart, the sensation spread maddeningly. He set his teeth against the feeling, but it was easily the most distracting thing other than the sharp angled face that kept veering in and out of his line of sight, baring teeth at him as his opponent tried to find an angle to land another blow. Blue blood trickled from the corner of the Andorian’s thin lipped grimace, the result of one of Karon’s earlier left hooks, which had caught the seasoned brawler off guard since the tightly packed Human usually favoured his right.

Karon lunged to one side as his opponent came in low for a swing, the antennae on his head twitching ever so slightly to signal the move, a tell which could get the man killed if anyone ever picked up on it. Karon’s boot turned on a loose stone as he put weight on it, and his leg swept out from under him in a spectacular skid as his momentum carried him downslope on the shale shelf they’d been brawling on, fighting his balance the whole way. Realizing he wouldn’t regain his footing and get back to a defensible stance before his opponent took the advantage, he decided on the next best tactical option, and leaned into the slide, scraping fingertips as he balanced himself down a long cliff face in forced retreat. The ten-foot drop at the bottom would have been thirty without his maneuver, but he landed in a solid crouch with no meaningful harm done, coming quickly to the ready and catching a shower of grit on his forearm before glaring up the way he came. In the black silhouette that loomed against the dark, starstruck cobalt of the night sky, two ruby glints of light danced where his opponent’s eyes shifted to decide on a next move, the faint thermographic vision that gave his race their advantage in a world of perpetual ice catching twilight like fire.  In the next instant, both were on the move.

The low ground was rarely a favourable position to take in a battle, and if the difference in height were less, or if he had to contend with weapons fire, Karon would be in much deeper trouble. As it was, since he was not seeking to escape from this battle any more than the Andorian, their separation merely added a brief reprieve to reconsider strategies as their worked out what path to take through the canyon maze to once again come to blows. The topography and geology of the area was a product of millions of years of foundation and an interplay of elements which made beauty out of the primal forces of nature: here at the lowest points, harder rock tabled under a thousand generations of sand sediments which had been lain in carefully layered iterations when this desert had been an ocean abyss: patience and curiosity could unearth the remnants of not only the creatures which had drifted down into the lightless fathoms to feed anoxic creatures that picked clean their glistening bones, but the fragments of societies which had come later, when the water drained away to fill other chasms, leaving glacial drifts and swamplands to press slate and shale overtop of the finer grit below. Ice ages had come and gone over the world Karon sprinted through now, until the vulgar brutality of summer flooding had begun to carve writhing channels of smoothing water though ever-deepening corridors, molding the terrain into a brain-like, soft-curved, ridged and wrinkled labyrinth that defied any description that did not include the terms ‘stark’ and ‘beautiful’.

Sweat mixed with dust dredged out of the poetry of deep time as Karon wheeled around another turn. He could feel his breath, just as he could feel his ear, and the sting of his own salts as they seeped into the corners of his eyes. The perspiration was a result of the exertion rather than the environment: while this was a desert, it was the kind which forsook any semblance of heat when the sun disappeared, and the few rocks which did retain heat throughout the canyons quickly bled it out into chill, biting winds that sapped warmth from the bones. This was an equalizing factor in his current dilemma, as the Andorian who was currently hunting him back was built for colder climes, and would have trouble keeping up with his metabolism if he had to contend with the heat as well. Under the burning sun, Karon would have been uncomfortable, but functional, while the Andorian would need to retreat into shadow and possibly more extreme solutioning, lest he suffer from heat stroke severe enough to kill. Instead, Karon needed to keep moving, keep his blood pumping and his body churning, or the chill would wick his sweat away with his vitality, and he would freeze under the summer sky.

He careened around another corner, instinct blaring that now would be when battle was rejoined, and he was not disappointed. Whether it was how long he’d been moving, or some other subtle sense of predatory awareness that told him he was not alone, he came around the corner to the onrushing shape of a swooping, booted leg, directly at chest height. Had he been unprepared, the axe kick would have taken him out at his center of balance, probably folding him in half as it bounced the teeth out of his head on the stone below. Instead, he caught the kick mid-momentum, turning into its source, and pulling the Andorian off his feet in a throw which used his own inertia to power through. His opponent folded his knee rather than let it be twisted, and jumped into the throw in order to capture some control of his direction and speed, so that when Karon released him it was into a controlled tumble back down the corridor rather than as a pancake into the wall. Still, it looked painful, and it took Karon as much time to stop and regain his balance as it did for the Andorian to roll to his feet at the end of the corridor, shirt torn in half, and pants shorn away at each knee. It didn’t seem to slow the alien at all, however, and the two rushed to meet in the boxed clearing that had been chosen for the ambush.

The blue skinned man went low, even as Karon went high with an overhand swing aimed at the crown of his head. It missed, grazing a solid, muscular shoulder just as it pistoned into Karon’s ribs, taking him clear off his feet and skidding him back two meters across the rough stone. He could feel rock chips biting into his skin, and kicked a knee up between them to throw his opponent off overhead. He was slower than the Andorian to get up, however, and found himself rolling side to side to avoid sharp kicks which rained down around him, aimed at his chest and head. Timing himself, familiar with the dance-like Andorian martial art his opponent favoured, he crossed his arms over his face in time to catch one of the blows, and quickly spread them wide in a tearing motion which twisted his opponent’s leg around sharply, eliciting a surprised cry from the as-yet silent alien overhead as he collapsed on his face in the dirt. This time, they both got up at about the same time, both warier, and both slowing down as the exertion began to catch up with them.

“You are playing hard today,” said the Andorian, his hands waving mesmerically in front of him, black gloves clearly curled as if to clutch one of the ice-carving knives his people used for everything on their home world. He stepped carefully, keeping his core protected, hunched away as his blue blood soaked into his clothes from the various exposed flesh wounds. “If you fought like this every day, I dare say no one would ever beat you.”

Karon lunged forward, his own hands spread wide for the time being, exhibiting a grappler’s stance even though he didn’t much favour the technique. His hands snapped and grabbed at the Andorian’s fingers and wrists, looking for some opening to pull him off balance and change his footing. He didn’t deign to answer the compliment, knowing it to be a front for a coming taunt: Andorians did that, it was their way, never a kind word without a waiting taunt. Fortunately for Karon, knowing this gave him the advantage of knowing it would signal the next attack as well.

“No one but me, anyway!” a feint, a lunge. Karon braced for the first, thinking he’d catch the second reeling swing, typical of the fighting stance his foe affected, and was caught entirely off guard as the Andorian stooped nearly all the way to the stone floor before rocketing up in a haymaker uppercut that knocked him clear off his feet. This was a human move, not an ice-fighter’s attack, which relied on fleetness and spinning momentum, feeding their curved pushblades the momentum to cut through enemy defenses and gut a foe too slow to match their partner’s cadence. The punch would have been brutal on the wiry fighter’s arm, probably breaking knuckles and making the man ache to the shoulder, but it had a spectacular effect on Karon’s more massive frame, not only taking him by surprise, but sending him for a loop that sprawled him head over heels.

The world spun, filling with stars that seemed to swoop in from the dark sky overhead, and he couldn’t hear anything but the rushing thrum of blood coursing through his veins for long enough that a sluggish voice inside his head had to coax him into action, demanding to know how long he was going to be out. He had no idea how long he’d been prone before he levered himself up onto a forearm, spitting a wet tooth out onto the dry grit, and wobbled to his feet. His vision swam into focus, and he could see his opponent reeling back, clutching his arm, swearing in a language the universal translator dubiously refused to clarify. Karon ran the back of his hand over his lips, under his nose, swiping the copious blood away from both in a fruitless gesture that only served to hurt. The Andorian looked at him, eyes widening at what he saw, as vessels had burst in each of Karon’s eyes, leaving them red deepening into black.

“Karon, I…” he began, but the Human didn’t let him speak. He lunged forward, falling into a compact boxer’s stance as he went, feet shuffling over the hard ground. The Andorian initially gaped at this attack, before jumping back to put some distance between them, eyes hardening. He changed up his stance, taking on another Human martial art stance, a low profile Wushu stance that protected his damaged arm behind his body, while positioning him for footwork and kicks. Karon didn’t hesitate, diving in to engage like a shark tasting blood. Karon pressed in fast and hard, deflecting the Andorian’s fleet, but low power kicks with arm blocks and short jabs. His eyes were locked on his opponent’s face, and everything he caught came from instinctual peripheral senses. As soon as he had reach, his opponent would slide back, putting himself deftly out of range, but Karon pursued each time, dauntless, perhaps unhinged in his dogged pursuit. It wasn’t long before the blue skinned man was trying to skirt along unyielding cavern walls, unable to take his eyes off of Karon to take in the terrain, forced to rely on his hearing and the sensory inputs of his frantic antennae to tell him where to be. That was when Karon had his reach.

The first blow to land shot through the Andorian’s defense, grazing his cheek as he barely pulled his head aside in time. It was followed by another and another, quick jabs which travelled just far enough to deliver the message before pulling back into a defensive posture. Blue blood erupted from his opponent’s mouth and nose, staining his knuckles, mingling to violet with his own iron-rich hue. The few retaliatory strikes which made it out of the ice-man’s corner were easily deflected, or absorbed by the solid wall of the boxing posture in front of him, and suddenly it was a one-sided fight. Blow after blow sailed out of Karon’s vicious square, bare knuckles ringing against darkening blue skin as he pummeled hit after hit against the Andorian’s weakening defenses, and rattled his solid, broad-browed head with tooth-shaking, viper-like strikes. It took seconds for his opponent to collapse under the hits, falling heavily back against the sandstone wall, and throwing his arms up to defend himself, cupping his antennae protectively under his palms.

Still the human kept firing punches, his tunnel vision blurred red with his own blood, now pooling behind his lensed corneas. He struck an exposed ear, crushed a broad vein on the back of a blue hand, and fractured his opponent’s wrist. The Andorian shouted pained, wordless complaints, shock and agony mingling in his voice as he cried out: “Karon! KARON! Stop! Stop!”

But he did not stop. He did not hear. He just kept punching, fighting, feeling nothing but the blood, feeling nothing but the light headed sensation of his mind drifting from his body.

“Computer! Yield!”

A third voice, gruff, iron-hard, and stern. Instantly, to the friendly electronic chirrup of acknowledgement which came from somewhere behind the stone walls, somewhere past the dark sky, the room around the fighters froze. Photonic feedback blazed a bright white around Karon’s fists as some textureless density manifested itself between him and his felled Andorian prey. The shock of it collapsed Karon’s elbow, as it was something like punching his way into a bucket of sand when he was expecting to hit a target half a foot further on, and he lost his balance, tripping into a wall which suddenly wasn’t there. The twisted corridors and starlit night gave way to the black and yellow grid of the holodeck as photonic energy dissipated with a vacuous hiss, leaving both combatants sprawled out, broken and exhausted, on the vaguely rubberized floor. Medics rushed to each of them, finding neither in good condition, and a concerned murmur, previously masked by the program’s ambient noise cancellation, filled the empty space. It took a long moment before someone deigned to applaud, and the effort was followed by a half-hearted rejoinder from some of the rest of the gallery.

The third man stooped, his dark-skinned fingers closing around the cracked molar which Karon had spit after he got to his feet: unlike the rest of the scene, it had not faded with the cooling lamps of the holo emitters, and Captain Durok of the house of Maleth rolled it in his palm, heedless of the mess. He raised a well groomed, if pronounced eyebrow, and strode over to the Andorian who still clung to consciousness on the floor. He patted the tooth against the man’s battered chest, capturing the grip of the hand the man raised to defend himself in his insensible state, and pulling it to cover the grisly prize. “Well fought, Thy’ren. You do your family honour.” Praise to which the man quieted, for the tone it was delivered if not for the words themselves.

The captain conferred briefly with the medics, enough to know that Thy’ren Shurel would recover, if with some lasting need to recuperate from such a ruthless beating, before he levered himself to his feet and walked over to the other prone man. An Emergency Medical Hologram has been summoned from the Holodeck interface to help tend to his injuries, the modified Mark 1 showing deep concern for his patient, given the Voyager Protocols it had been given to upgrade its matrix with. Durok traced his black-nailed fingertips across the smooth brow of his forehead—strange for a Klingon—with a sigh, both of concern and of appreciation for Karon’s demonstrated bloodlust. Durok was an older captain, in his mid-seventies, and while not yet an old man by any means, tempered of his youthful furies by a life of experience. He’d known many warriors like Karon, but it never ceased to amaze him to see the fury rear its head in a Human.

Many Klingons, and many Andorians for that matter, let alone the other accumulated races which came in and out of Federation embrace over the years, underestimated the Humans, who spoke softly, often spoke of diplomacy and ideology and peace. Few seemed to see these intrepid explorers as more than a naïve, soft-bellied race, unfit for the hardships of interstellar space. But Durok was as much a historian as he was a warrior, and he had learned of the history of the Human race, enough to fear them like the wiser of his ancestors had, enough to respect them like the smarter of his ancestors had, and enough not to distrust them, like the more foolish of his ancestors had. T’Kuvma had warned the great houses about the Federation not because of the Vulcans, or the Andorians, or the Tellarites, but because of these small, child-faced diplomats and their soft tongues, this after the Klingon species had been undeniably changed by disastrous experimentation with the Augmented Humans even their own kind had seen fit to reject. Time and again, from the brink of extinction, this tenacious species had defied all odds, and time and again when faced with the wrath of his own people, they had proven themselves worthy of the glory of Sto-vo-kor and the disdain of Gre’thor all at once. They were not a people to be taken lightly, and as Durok’s fingertips graced the arrow point insignia at his breast, marking him as a Star Fleet officer along with the pips at his throat, he considered the duality of their message of peaceful enforcement, and how readily they had led more mature space-faring races into a galactic community by the nose.

He shook his head to clear it, and knelt by the man on the floor. The holographic specialist bypassed his usual routine, and simply gave report of the patient’s condition.

“I have no idea when he lost consciousness, but it was certainly before he stopped moving,” the hollow man began. Despite his occasionally craven pacifism, Durok liked the hologram, who like most of his kind hadn’t chosen a proper name for himself despite having made a full-time hobby of considering it. Much like the humans who had crafted him, the Doctor was full of nuance and accidental depth, surprising skill, and cunning beyond the semblance of a simple computer simulacra. Humans had a habit of that, as well, and the modern mythology was littered with stories of the anomalies they had encountered, or even crafted, and either tamed or succumbed to. The Doctor continued when Durok met his look, acknowledging him in silence.

“He has fractures in both his hands, which is to be expected, as well as a number of abrasions in his extremities. I’ve reviewed the footage since being brought online so none of that is surprising. One of his retinas has become entirely detached, while the other is barely hanging on, and I’ve had to alleviate the pressure in his eyeballs in a rather primitive effort to save them.” The operation in question had had the obvious result of draining blood out of the man’s face through small stents in the corners of his eyes, which had been immobilized by a neuro-cortical inhibitor clipped to each temple. “He’s got numerous broken teeth, one of which I just watched you give away like a crackerjack prize, a dislocated jaw, broken in two places, fractured orbitals, and ruptured eardrums. As if that weren’t enough,” he said, adjusting the dial on one of the inhibitors with a worried look, “he’s suffering from atlanto-occipital disclocation. Mister Shurel literally kicked my patient’s head off, and got beaten half to death for the trouble. I don’t think I have to tell you how I feel about this, Captain.”

Durok looked around the small circle of medics who were attending with the EMH, seeing his medical Chief of Staff included among them, preferring to defer to the hologram’s diagnosis while she worked on treating the injuries. She was Bolian, a usually exuberant race, and now her focus prevented her from chiming in. The medical tricorder in her hand was helping her locate fractured bones and torn ligaments, and apply regenerative energy pulses indirectly to a tool held by her chief surgical assistant. Together they were literally re-attaching Lieutenant Karon Andersen’s head to his neck enough to risk any form of transport away from the holodeck for further care. Durok stroked his thin moustache thoughtfully before clapping the holographic Doctor on the shoulder, and using him to lever up to a standing position. “When they recover,” he began, knowing with full confidence that they would, in fact, recover, “I would like you to refer both of them to psychiatric care for a therapeutic course before allowing them to return to duty.”

Everyone nearby halted, surprised by the order. The still spread through the gallery in a wave, and died in much the same way as the medics resumed their duties, and the spectators started discussing the latest gossip. The EMH stood up, leaving himself behind as he did so, so that two of the balding men were now wandering the holographic room, with one following at the captain’s heels. The second man spoke, quietly, aware of the listeners nearby.

“Not that I am not pleasantly surprised, Captain, but given the nature of this exercise, and the fact that you continue to promote this training, an accident like this was inevitable, eventually. Do you expect that the injuries will do something to either of their morale?” in his typical obtuse way, the Doctor had split his personage, but not his focus, and he was so fixated on the physical and complex injuries of his patient that he had not considered other contributing factors.

Durok sighed, and lowered his voice. “No, Doctor. I do not think it’s the injuries which will take their worst toll. We aren’t here because a sparring match got out of hand, we’re here because our crew has suffered a loss, and grief has made a weapon of brothers at arms.”

He rubbed his palms together, and the red, human blood which had dried there balled up and peeled away onto the floor to be recycled by the cleaners. Would that an injury of the spirit could be so easily discarded. “Doctor, I know you feel that these exercises are barbaric, needless, and dangerous, but they are a deeply entrenched part of many cultures. Your programming, and your evolved sense of self, both allow you to see them as you do, but have yet to allow you to see them as we do. I do not hold this against you, as you are a young, growing man, with much time left to come to know battle as we ‘organics’ do.” When the EMH moved to respond, the captain put his hands up, smiling, downward in a Klingon gesture of intellectual submission which had colloquially translated to ‘please let me finish’.

“When people fight, it is as insightful as when people dream. It opens pathways to the spirit which would otherwise be masked by propriety, by society, by guile. We Klingons are very honest with this practice, perhaps to the detriment of other methods of self care, but we are not alone: warrior cultures such as the Andorians, the Bajorans, the Cardassians, even the Jem’Hadar embrace this truth when others fail. It is more than Catharsis, Doctor, it is truth in a language as primal as the melting pot soup you find in each of our blood.” He turned his hands upward, glancing at the ceiling a deck above. “And when no other truth satisfies a question too primal to be worked through with reason, when emotions fail, and turmoil is the only sea to sail, battle brings us closer to knowing ourselves, and each other. These men did not attempt to kill each other here today, they simply almost did so, because they were seeking to know in their own way the answer to a question denied to them by death.”

The hologram swallowed, his mouth broadening in acceptant disapproval. His subroutines were an ever-growing web of interlinking ideas, pathways growing like a hungry mind, trimmed and tailored by favoured algorithms which had taken on a mind of their own. His processing would require that he investigate the cultural claims Durok had made before dismissing them outright, and it was likely that not enough information as immediately at hand for him to form a rebuttal, so there would be some time before the program that was the Doctor’s spirit could produce more than a facile, predictable response. Durok respected that he did not try: it was the thing which convinced him that this hollow man at his side was more than a set of logic gates with attitude.

The captain continued. “We lost four crewmen to senseless deaths on our latest assignment, Doctor. Can you not tell me that you wish you understood -that- better? That your program doesn’t yearn for a vindication of their unworthy demise? They were good men, good women, and they were our kin; we loved them, and they were taken from us by, what, an artifact of a people whose own deaths are so long lost to the annals of history that they would need to steal from us to make a last ripple in the cosmos?”

Not a week before, on an away mission led by Lieutenants Andersen and Shurel, two junior officers and a detachment of the science team had uncovered a device entrenched in a time capsule, buried under the rubble of a society which had lived and died on a world which had once been M-Class, and was slowly regaining its livable sovereignty without the impediment of an indigenous sentient species. They had followed protocols, but the device had been trapped, intentionally baited for the curious, and the antimatter explosion had erased their lights from the fabric of life without thought, or will, or remorse, simply ancient, directionless malice. It was a death without honour or sense. Durok’s brow knit and he closed his eyes.

There was silence. The Doctor did not speak, but pain lit his features, and Durok knew it to be genuine. Nearby, not quite out of earshot for the keen hearing of a Caitian and a Vulcan who were discussing the fight, a low sound of dismay cracked the cold demeanor of the young Vulcan science officer who had lost her bunkmate to the tragedy, quickly to be muffled by the embrace of her shipmate to surprisingly little protest. Durok swore under his breath, and knew that what he’d said would spread, for better or worse. He felt the menace of tears in his own eyes as he felt the loss of his crew again for the hundredth time this day, and every day since, and shook his head to clear the feeling away. He stepped away from the wall toward the center of the holodeck, and barked for attention.

“Ka’vek, my worthy crew! Attend.” Quickly, all the gathered on the holodeck stilled, though the medics kept working. Durok paused, and addressed the computer. “Captain to all crew; computer, record message for all incapacitated, or off-duty members.” An affirmative chime. A moment’s pause.

“It is long past due that we should gather to honour our dead. We have held the ceremonies to witness their military release, but an empty coffin cast among the stars is not closure. Two weeks ago, we surveyed another M-Class world which was riddled with beauty and mystery, and left surveying drones to gather for us what many on our ship would have rather found themselves. Our mission has express directives for where we should proceed next, but it allows us leeway for discovery and innovation which might enrich the culture of the Federation, and all those who benefit from its insights. I say there is no greater enrichment than to honour our family by returning to a time and a place when we were together, bonding, and sharing passion for our true mission among the stars. We will return to that world, which our late survey team affectionately named ‘Light After Dawn’ in the unofficial register, and we will share a ceremony of Du’khev’do mehet, a telling of lives.  We will go to where, and when, they were with us, and we will share ourselves with their spirits to herald them to their afterlives with honour, dignity, and the favour of their crew.”

He paused, aware of his responsibilities as a Star Fleet Captain to be considerate of other ideologies, and went on. “For those of the crew who do not ascribe to such beliefs, hear this: even should the dead not need to hear our voices raised in their honour, the living among us do. We are what remains here of their stories, of the people they were, to us, and we will carry the burden of their absence forward for all our days. But we will not do this alone. Through them, we are together, and through each other, we are family. Qapla'!”

As his message tapered, members of the crew on all 8 decks of the Nova II-Class explorer ‘Vellouwyn’ brought hands to their com badges, many dipping their heads, murmuring a quiet ‘Qapla’’ in response to their captain’s message. The Vellouwyn was a small ship, made for science and research, and her crew were close for all their many, varied differences. They would return together to Light After Dawn, and together they would celebrate their lost friends in the memories before they were gone, rather than being left only to mourn the absence of their passing. Somewhere in a holomatrix in the heart of the ship, algorithms which had festered and stalled in an effort to reconcile a concept as hard as the division of zero began to heal: understanding the difference between the shock of sudden loss, and the blending of change as a wound draws strength from the tissue that surrounds it, spreading the bruise, but healing the injury.

In a quiet place, beneath conscious thought, Lieutenant Karon Andersen dreamed of a blue skinned girl who had smiled at him in the mess hall the night her brother had given her away. In a quiet place, beneath conscious thought, Lieutenant Thy’ren Shurel dreamed of the love in his new brother’s eyes as he looked on her hope-filled face. Together, they mourned each other, and shared a silent dream.

[etymologyofmind]

♫ ♬Lowered Expectations ♬♫

Well here I am on Tumblr. I haven’t been here since Pornageddon proved that the fastest way to tank a platform’s popularity is to forsake its roots. Why am I here now? Deviantart is making people sign up to see my writing samples, and that’s dumb.

We’ll see if Tumblr has any better plans.

To start with I am going to transfer some of my star trek fan fiction, just to play around. If you’ve found that... good luck, and I’m sorry.

Cheers,

Shiv