"Devil of a Time"

(Takes place five weeks after 'Devil in the Details, Part 6)

Principal Characters

Captain Erik Todeshändler [Lt (JG) Victor Krieghoff]
V'kala Todeshändler [Imperial Attendant K'vala Mahask]

****

Trigun System
Cross's World

As he took cover behind an overturned table, Victor reflected that he didn't like a great many things.

Not really a surprising revelation, no one living was really any different. People didn't like colors, foods, scents, textures, and sounds. They disliked combinations of those things like blue fur or rose-scented fabrics. They even disliked whole categories of things, like all humans, for no particular reason. Victor himself disliked bland food and alcoholic drinks, although for different reasons.

In this case, as he landed on the stone floor and the whine of black-market blasters and aftermarket Cardassian disruptors filled the room, Victor came to the realization that at the moment the thing he didn't like the most was really quite simple compared to most of those. It didn't depend on an ephemeral issue like personal taste or how an odor was interpreted, and didn't require a complex explanation to be completely and totally understandable to almost anyone. It was simple, clear, and direct.

Victor did not like being shot at and not being able to shoot back.

It was even more of an irritant to him that, on this occasion, the shooting actually had nothing to do with him. People wanting to kill him was nothing new, Victor had known what that felt like since he was ten. What he wasn't used to was the threat of death being so indiscriminate. This time it wasn't because of what he was inside, or his species, or even his status as a Starfleet officer. He was currently the subject of enough incoming fire to pin down a Marine platoon simply because he'd walked into a particularly vile little bar on the off chance that the Tiburonian arms dealer he was looking for was there at the same time what appeared to be three separate groups of people all decided to kill each other - he was simply an innocent bystander caught in someone else's fight.

As beams of deadly energy crisscrossed the room over his head, he sighed and activated the comlink pickup in his jacket lapel, near the collar. Assuming he lived through this, he'd be behind schedule and V'kala needed to know to pick up his slack on their list of potential contact spots. =/\= "V'kala. Problems. Pick up my list after number eight unless I call back." =/\=

It was odd how quickly he'd begun to think of her as V'kala and not K'vala. In the five weeks that they'd been working their way towards the Triangle, picking up small cargoes and meeting the people that appeared on the Attendant's list of individuals that dealt with the arms dealers they were after, he'd found it easy to slip into the fiction of their cover. It was easy to grow used to having someone, the same someone, there every morning, all day, and in the evening. It was easy to grow used to dividing the workload, to grow used to making coffee for two, to grow to depend on them to watch your back when things grew dangerous.

It was too easy.

That was because it was a lie. A very seductive one, that played to the small part of him that still believed in the One, and hoped that he might find her despite all evidence to the contrary, but a lie nonetheless. Victor knew about lies and the pain they caused; that was why he didn't like them and why he didn't tell them.

But that didn't mean that sometimes in the middle of the night, as he lay there, awake, and listened to the Attendant breathe as he'd listened to Grey breathe, he didn't close his eyes and let himself believe the lie for a few minutes.

=/\= "What problems?" =/\= The Attendant's voice snapped out crisply in his earpiece. One thing that hadn't changed when she'd become V'kala was her short, clipped speech when there was a hint of danger.

Victor shifted position slightly and peered around the edge of the table at the firefight. =/\= Fight. Three sides. Cardassian disruptors and blasters. I'm pinned until they finish." =/\=

=/\= "Where?" =/\=

Victor thought a second. =/\= "Not on list. Sharln Quarter. Vrestle Street. Alley on left. Sign says 'Drinks.'" =/\=

=/\= "Understood. Injured?" =/\=

=/\= "No." =/\=

=/\= "Good. Don't be." =/\=

Victor smiled humorlessly as a pair of blaster bolts chewed away at his cover in rapid succession. =/\= "Don't have much to say about it." =/\=

=/\= "If you get hurt again, I will make you wish that fool of a Denobulan had killed you, husband. It took you two weeks longer than it should have to heal that stab wound because you would not listen to me." =/\=

She was definitely irritated. She never called him 'husband' unless she was mad about something. In this case, Victor knew what it was without asking: her plan required both of them be healthy, and he seemed to be on the verge of messing that up. Again.

=/\= "I listened to you, wife. There was just no time for the rest you prescribed if we were to keep our schedule." =/\=

She also wasn't happy when he called her 'wife' - something their cover-story had managed to force at least several times a day lately.

=/\= "Five minutes, husband. If you are injured, I will kill you myself." =/\=

He'd certainly heard that before too. =/\= "I'll be counting the seconds, wife." =/\=

Victor wasn't certain why he felt the need to needle her so much. Probably because the thing he was inside was closer to the surface as Erik, than it ever was as Victor. He hoped that when the time came, he'd be able to put the genie back in the lamp and simply be Victor again.

Movement by his feet drew his attention away from inward thoughts as a figure crawled into view, moving along the floor behind overturned furniture as it approached his feet. Expressionlessly, Victor drew back one foot to kick if necessary and waited for the crawling man to draw nearer. He had no intention of allowing his too-rapidly shrinking cover to be turned into a firing position for one of the groups engaged in the firefight.

The crawler, eyes on the floor, moved forward slowly until his head bumped into Victor's foot, and then looked up with wide, panicked eyes. "N-no! Please! Don't k-kill me!"

That, at least, was a reaction Victor was used to. "Don't give me a reason to, then."

The crawler nodded jerkily and scuttled closer, drawing alongside Victor. "Y-you're n-not one of t-them, are y-you?"

"One of the idiots shooting the place up? No." Victor dropped his foot and lay flat to present the smallest target area to a random shot. "I'm just stuck here until amateur hour is over."

"A-amateur hour?"

"Amateur hour. Theses idiots have no idea what they're doing. They just start shooting and wait for their power cells to run dry." Victor didn't have to disguise the contempt in his voice. "A professional would chew the lot of them up and spit them out."

"A-a p-professional?"

"Someone that used weapons for a living, that actually *trained* with them as opposed to watching a holo and deciding that they can shoot as well as the characters in it without any practice. Klingons, Cardassians, some Nausicaans, even some people out of Starfleet - any real warrior - would make short work of the lot of them."

"O-oh." The crawler paused. "Y-you're not s-scared?"

"No."

"W-why?"

"Two reasons. One, because these morons aren't what scares me; they aren't even close." Victor opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. "They're not worth being scared of."

"T-they're p-plenty scary t-to m-me."

"Only if you let them be."

"E-easy f-for you t-to say. Y-you're... you're p-plenty s-scary all by y-yourself. I-I'm not."

Victor turned his head and really looked at the crawler for the first time. He was an older Tiburonian, short and thin, his scalloped ears resembling a pair of sails that protruded from the sides of his head. "Anyone can be frightening under the right circumstances." Was this shaking old man the arms dealer he was looking for? Surely not.

"I-I can't."

"You can. You just haven't wanted it enough, that's all."

"N-no, r-really. I'm s-scared all t-the t-time." The old man cringed as another bolt - a disruptor this time - chewed away more of the overturned table. "S-see?"

Victor shook his head. "Like I said, they have no idea what they're doing."

The old man was silent for a moment. "D-do y-you... do y-you... are you a... professional?"

Maybe he was the dealer Victor had been looking for, maybe he wasn't. He certainly couldn't come out and ask; that would ruin the deal before it started. "Depends."

"O-on w-what?"

"On what you mean. I've been called a lot of things." That was certainly true. "Maybe that was one of them." Victor didn't recall it, but he tended to ignore the things that people called him most times; maybe someone had used that word and he'd missed it.

"C-can you g-get us o-out of h-here? A-alive?" The Tiburonian's ears quivered. "I-I'll m-make it w-worth your w-while...."

That sounded promising. "Worth my while how?"

"You're a p-professional, r-right? Y-you n-need things t-to d-do your j-job. I c-can get t-them for y-you..."

Whether this was really the dealer he wanted or not, the opportunity was too good to pass up in case it was. "Done." Victor rolled his head back and closed his eyes again.

A moment passed, more bits of the table vanishing, and the Tiburonian asked, "Ummm... W-why aren't you d-doing s-something?"

"I'm waiting."

"W-waiting?"

"Remember I said I there were two reasons I wasn't scared?"

"Y-yes...."

"I only told you what one of them was. I'm waiting on the second one."

"T-the s-second one?"

Victor smiled in spite of himself. "Yes."

"W-what... w-what is i-it?'

"My wife. She ought to be here any minute now... and she's very irritated at our schedule being interrupted. These idiots are in for a devil of a time then."

"Y-your... w-wife?" The old man managed to sound terrified and skeptical at the same time.

"My wife," Victor confirmed. "She's...."

The doors to the bar blew off their hinges, plastiwood fragments showering the room like rain. All the firing in the room stopped for a second as the three gangs ducked and covered, and waited for the smoke to clear.

In the lull after the explosion, a black-clad figure stepped through the smoke with a snarl, mek'leth in hand and cut down the closest shooter as he turned.

"... here, now," Victor finished. "Excuse me for a moment, sir. I have some work to do to get us out of here." He fingered his lapel. =/\= "Standing up by the wall to your right, wife." =/\=

As he stood, the Tiburonian cowering behind him, the slim shape of a compressed tetryon beam pistol - part of the collection of weapons that Phnel had given them back on Denobula - arced across the room and fell into his outstretched hand. Without a pause, he began firing, each shot dropping a gang member in counterpoint to the Attendant as she continued to slice them down, the bolts working their way in from the edges, with an occasional skip ahead to take down a gang member that was drawing a bead on her.

Like it or not, he was what the Tiburonian had thought he was... which meant that the scared old man was almost certainly the one they were here to find. As he switched his point of aim and shot a man rising up behind V'kala through the head, he smiled without humor. Dealers in death could always recognize each other.

"Conversations"

Ensign Saul Bental,
Intelligence Officer

Communication. Your best tool when facing other members of society could also become your worst foe.

Those who master it can twist reality in their direction, making others believe in what they want to and obscuring what they want to keep discrete. Those who lack control over the little nuances can bring their own demise in a single word.

A good friend from the Academy told me once that Federation standard is like an arsenal of weapons. If you're going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they're loaded, you should expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.

I tend to agree.

* * * *

Saul lied on his stomach, chin resting on hands which in turn rested on the pillow. It was nighttime, and he finally finished what he wanted to do that day and got back to his room.

The room was dark, lit only by the display in front of him, which now showed the face of the Operations officer. Saul still tried to search his rusted memory and determine whether she was the OPS officer who went with them on the Valkyrie or not.

"How was the tour?" she asked.

Saul couldn't believe the words that were streaming through his mouth, but they came out anyway. "I enjoyed it greatly. They're a happy bunch. If you need someone to do that again, just let me know."

She smiled, in an 'I told you so' fashion. "I'll keep that in mind. Oh, and Quartermaster Maro says that the person you asked him about was found and came back to the ship."

"Yes, I know that." Saul replied. He already found out that the 'name of the manifest' was found, alive. Rumors said that a small group of senior officers containing that person were stranded on a strange planet, and rescued by Klingons.

Well, he was going to deal with that tomorrow, after a good night sleep. He wished the Operations officer good night, and signed off. Blessed silence filled the room, and his heavy eyelids began to close. In his last moments of consciousness, Saul's worst dilemma was whether to turned on his back or remain on his stomach.

And then, the display chirped again.

"Verdomd…" Saul cursed, drawing his arm out of the warm blanket and reaching for the panel. He narrowed his eyes, trying to filter the strong light. It was an automatic message.

"Good day Ensign Saul Bental, the Herzelia Interdisciplinary centre is glad to inform you that you have successfully passed all of your exams for the third semester. Your grades are-"

"Computer, save message, folder University." Saul ordered in a tired tone. Unknown to most, he just finished his third semester out of four, studying for a Master's degree in Federal Security and Political sciences. The Interdisciplinary centre accepted his Academy studies as a perquisite for the master's degree, and didn't demand that he'll do a Bachelor degree first.

It was very hard to both study and work at the same time, but since he was on Earth during the first two semesters he succeeded well. During his third semester, he was in space most of the time, and lost a major work during the battle of Havras. His grades degraded, but he didn't study for grades anyway.

He studied because it interested him.

But not at this time of night, of course.

Just as that thought crossed his semi-sleeping mind, something chimed beneath his bed. Saul opened one eye, pulled the device from its hideout, and connected it to the panel next to his bed. He turned on his side, and watched as an image flickered into life.

"Was the job done?" demanded the Ferengi.

"No, not yet… and this line is not secured so watch your words." Saul hissed sharply.

"Yessss… I can see it's relayed to somewhere. Where are you?"

"Grok, I didn't manage to… do it on the Starbase." Saul said, choosing carefully his words. The Ferengi looked more devious and scheming than ever. And now he also appeared pissed – and for a good reason.

"Listen to me, Mr. Van Der Hemel. I hold your possessions in the balls, and if you fail me, you're not going to see a single strip of Latinum from your stock shares ever again. Did your tiny ears perceive what I'm telling you?"

"Of course. That's why I followed her to the ship." Saul replied, perhaps a little too brashly. "I'm on the ship right now as a stowaway."

Grok looked impressed, and muttered something in Klingon.

"Do you still need me to execute the job?"

"Yes, oh yes." The Ferengi told him passionately. "The peace talks are at a standstill, and now would be a perfect time for my client to initiate a chain of events… all we need is a spark, which you are going to provide soon. SOON, you hear me?"

"I hear you. But I'm going to wait until the ship arrives to its next station. Once I… do my job… I need to get out as soon as Humanly possible. Surely you understand that?"

The Ferengi snarled.

"Oh, and if we're talking, invest one quarter of my free credits in medical trade routes around Trill. I hear they're starting to enhance their efforts to rebuild that planet, and the demand for medical and construction supplies is going to skyrocket."

"You see, that's why I'm still doing business with you, you miserable hairy soft-skinned N'gash."

"Go clean some ear-wax before this signal is traced, Van Der Hemel out."

Saul frowned as the image faded. So far he was dancing on two parties – both making friends with Naranda, and being hired to assassinate her at the same time. Soon, the time will come for him to make his call.

This was extremely stressing, but Saul already had a plan in mind, and all he had to do was keeping it cool until the time comes. It wasn't easy, because he found himself quite fond of the 'Princess'. Even though she was overly serious most of the time, and was somewhat obsessed with her homeland (Even though neither of her parents were Sakarians, Saul mused to himself with amazement). And if that's not enough, Saul didn't mumble or feel nervous when around her, unlike how he acted when around women he was attracted to.

He knew he should be nervous. Woman or not, she was a telepath and he was hired to kill her. Any sane person would keep several light years between himself and a telepathic assassination victim.

He managed only to detach the scrambler device and shove it back beneath the bed when the regular communication panel made an annoying noise for the fourth time.

"Naaien!" Saul muttered loudly, then pressed the panel. "It's LATE!"

"For us folks in Utrecht III, it's morning now." Said a sleek alto voice.

Saul jumped out of his bed as though he was bitten by a Deltan sand slitherer. "Janny!"

Saul's cousin smirked at him. "Hello Saul.", she said in Dutch. She was an exotic one, an almost impossible hybrid between a Bolian and a Human. Her blonde hair cascaded over the pale blue skin, and those eyes were known throughout the Bental family as hypnotizing.

Saul was not mislead, and none of them were. Janny Bental was one of the most salty and successful merchant ever to carry the family name Bental.

"How did you find me?" Saul asked, dryly.

"A good intelligence officer never reveals his sources, no?", she asked, amused.

"Janny, I have nothing to discuss with you and I would appreciate it if my present location and job won't become public knowledge."

"Oh, don't worry, I'm going to keep this card very close to my waist." She smiled broadly. "I'm the only one who knows, and that's only because I was smart enough to keep track of you even when it seemed you were no longer interesting."

"Thank you. I don't recall any greeting cards for my birthday last year, though." Saul said wryly. Obviously, Janny didn't know that Devoss knew where he was. But two relatives were too much. Even his own mother didn't know where he was stationed!

"You'll be getting one on the next birthday. It's coming up, no?"

Saul shrugged his shoulders. Above Janny's left shoulder, he could see a small window in the wall, and the red-blue skies of Utrecht III could be seen through the curtains. There was also heavy smog, so he assumed she contacted him from her offices in Napoli, or one of the other three major cities in that time zone.

"Anyway, I wanted to invite you to a meeting." She said cheerfully, as though inviting him to some party. Saul recalled asking Karoue the Sakarian about the locations of the next several meetings. There were going to be at list five of them during that year, but he didn't actually intend to show up for the first four.

"I'm not game anymore. Just leave me alone." Saul demanded.

"Oh really? I wonder what ROSENTHAL would say about that. The poor fellow has to eat Bajoran food all day, and that's terrible for his diet."

"He's on Bajor now, that old klutz?"

"You're a terrible actor, Shaul." Janny said, brushing her blond hair. Two icy blue eyes fixed on him. "He's going to be on Bajor for the next six years because you screwed him up. You had some nerve to come to his prison and gloat at him afterwards."

Saul remained silent.

"I think it'll be good for you to appear at the meeting, as Shmuel's little boy – may his soul be at peace, by the way. Remember, I'm one of the legitimate merchants. If you're going to push yourself into the game, you side with me than with some of the others."

"I'm not taking sides." Saul protested. "I'm a Starfleet officer now. Which reminds me – I can't come to the meeting even if I wanted to, because I'm on a ship."

"A ship headed for Trill, I believe." She grinned. "Where the next meeting is going to take place."

Saul's face paled. "How do you?"

"Don't worry, there's no security breach, I have some assets related to the reconstruction efforts of Trill, and guess what ships are supposed to bring in medical supplies and personnel. Not everything is top secret, mister Intelligence guy."

"I'm not part of you anymore, I have my own life and purpose, I don't have time to play games."

"Be there or be square!" she replied cheerfully, and the display shifted and showed the UFP insignia, for the fourth time that day.

Saul rolled on his back, and ordered the computer to hold all incoming calls until the morning. All around him, the great ship was cruising through the vast reaches of space, heading for its inevitable destination.

Breen, Havras, Sakaria, Bajor, and now Trill. Another part of the grand painting was unveiled, and now he had to rethink of his entire plan, of his agenda.

The agenda.

As Saul finally began the long voyage into the depths of dreamland, he couldn't help but wonder if by handling the conversations differently, he could've been in a far better position right now.

"Rite of Passage" - Part I

By
Captain Daren M'Kantu,
Commanding Officer, USS Galaxy

Lieutenant Ammanalyn Llywhyn,
Assistant Chief Counselor, USS Galaxy

*****

Deck 1
Conference Room

Since departing Starbase 212 over a week previous, the Galaxy had been forced to run under sublight speeds was twofold.

One. In the event of mechanical error with the warp systems, the region of space they were to run the tests in would reduce the impact of widespread damage due to the desolation of the sector;

Two. Lieutenant O'Shea, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers representative overseeing the warp stress tests has petitioned for extra time to evaluate the Engineering department as a whole. Her concerns over the lack of cohesion between the officers and apparent distancing the current Chief Engineer practiced was distressing. His own visit to the department prior to launch attested to the anxiety felt by the Lieutenant and others in the department.

Tests had been delayed for 72 hours until those concerns were addressed.

Daren M'Kantu tapped the phase-tipped infrared stylus on the tableau in the Conference Lounge off the Main Bridge, and abruptly keyed off the Log Entry.

A sound much like a fish jumping caught his attention, causing him to look up in distraction.

Easing himself out of his synthetic leather-backed chair, he lay the silver writing unit in its cradle and approached the minor tank portal along the right panel.

A dolphin swum into view, undulating in the dark blue waves of the coduit until it came to a rest at the Captain's still form.

"Good morning to you 'Commander Hwii". Any progress on the system issues that Lt. O'Shea addressed to your team?" The dolphin was working double-shifts during this project. His ability to access extreme areas of the ship through his predisposed access conduits designed specifically for the marine form mad him extemely invaluable.

"Lieutenant O'Shea is prepared to initiate the countdown on your mark, sir." The chitter-sqwauk of the mammal was instantly translated into Federation Standard. "She is currently indisposed and cannot deliver the message herself, but requests your presence in Stardrive Engineering as the tests are conducted."

Daren contemplated the reasons why the SCE would not use the intercom system to communicate the request. It took but a moment. O'Shea required assurances with the Commanding Officer of the ship when it came to Engineering control. She must be encountering issues with personnel. This had to end. Being Starfleet officers, it was immature, unprofessional, and dangerous to question authority in any matter. It will be dealt with. Having the doplhin deliver the message personally rather than over the system would not give the appearance of simpering thereby damaging the credibility of the lead engineer.

"Inform the Lieutenant I'm on my way, 'Commander. Dismissed." The dolphin flipped nose over tail, swimming off in a trail of oxidation.

Suder was a Betazoid, and he needed someone who wouldn't raise suspicion once he arrived. Daren wasn't fearful of making a presence known, but after hearing reports of questionable behavior coming from various contacts with the Chief Engineer, he needed to evaluate him first hand, and without contaminating the situation with unrealistic data.

Speaking to the air, he called out for Ammanlyn Lywhyn.

"M'Kantu to Counselor Lywhyn." Small and unobtrusive, she is nothing if not undaunting.

[Llywhyn here, Captain,] her small, girlish voice said over the communications system, though since the incident on Breen, there was a coldness there, as though she was slightly disconnected from everything going on around her. [What can I help with?]

"I require your assistance, Counselor. I have a need for an evaluation of a senior staff member's general disposition without their being aware of it." Already on his way out the lounge bulkheads, he slipped into the turbolift immediately adjacent the exit. None of the bridge crew questioned his movement with a look.

*****

Bridge Turbolift
Currently on Hold and Restricted

"Right," Ammanalyn said. The frown was evident in her voice. "Where would you like us to meet for this conversation?"

"Main Engineering. The officer to be evaluated is Ethan Suder. Being a Betazoid poses potential risk in polluting the situation, let alone the intimidation factor my position brings. Your presence will detract from that." He paused at the hesitation in the counselor's voice on response to his initial query. "Something on your mind, Counselor?"

"Perhaps we should discuss face to face rather than via the comm, Captain," Ammanalyn said. Again, the differences in the child-like woman since Breen were clear. Previously, the likelihood of her speaking to the captain on such a peer's level would be slim to null. But now, there was barely a waver in her soft spoken tones.

"Agreed. What is your location?" He could've asked the turbolift intuitive interface, but that would most likely be rude, especially if the locater had not been tuned to limitation of locations. He most did not need to know if the counselor was in the lavatory performing bodily functions when he had called.

"I am currently in my office. We can meet here or in your readyroom if you would prefer."

"Your offices will do fine. Be ready when I arrive."

*****

Deck 14
Counseling Offices

Tucking the larger library-padd under his right arm, Daren leaned into the perimeter of the recognition infrared that ultimately responded by swishing open. Seeing the seats currently in the lounge inhabited by enlisted and off-duty personnel, they recognized his status and stumbled to rise in salutation. Nodding, he approached the secretary on station, a Risian who carried an eternal smile, something of a rare commodity in sterile environments.

"Counselor Llywhyn, if you please, Cadet."

The waif and her snow leopard shaped companion had emerged from her office to stand in the hallway entrance. They looked at the Captain expectantly, her large brown eyes a contrast to the creature's large pale blue. Both sets of eyes saw right through him in an unwavering gaze. "Captain. Please, follow me," she said.

The counselor had changed perceptibly since returning from Havras. M'Kantu had not had much chance to interact with his crew, nor was it in relentless schedule to allow such. Socializing was not a luxury he could afford in his lonely life as a ship's captain. He was curious where this methodical coldness in evolution in the Daedryn's life would lead, and if she was herself seeking counseling. He kepy his concerns to himself this day, though, as more important items were on the agenda.

"We have very little time, Counselor," spoken as he fell in step behind her. "I need not remind you of the import of our propulsion tests, do I?"

"Perhaps briefly," she said, glancing over her shoulder as she led him into her office. "I do not usually keep abreast of engineer functions considering I'm... a well." A pause. She looked at the Captain, forehead creasing. "A counselor." For a minute, her expression looked as though it was the first time that had ever entered her head. She rested her hand on Tam's head as she settled onto the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her. "Sit, Captain, and tell me what is going on."

Daren shook his head, chuckling softly. "No, counselor, this is not about me. If you concerned for my mental health, add a note to my calendar. If you are currently tied up in other endeavors, I would have appreciated it if you could've informed me before I arrived at your offices. Our orders are to have perishable and in need supplies delivered to Trill within two months. Now, this allows for errors in propulsion systems, I'm told, but in no way will we arrive on time if we dally in any other obligations other than the ones we have promised, and mine is to be in Engineering immediately. "Now, are you accompanying me, or shall I locate another more flexible psychologist who does not disobey orders?"

"Back from the Dead"

Lieutenant Cutter Kara'nin
Chief Astrophysicist

Ensign Saul Bental
Intelligence Officer

Saul clenched his fists as the door swished open. He could spot the sign 'Science Department Offices, deck 15' just before it vanished, leaving an empty doorway.

An officer came out of the nearest door to his left, the one marked 'Anthropology', and headed for the entrance. Saul immediately recalled her face from science classes on the Academy. His minor was Science, and he was always good at Anthropology and its related subjects.

There were times he regretted majoring Intel and minoring sciences instead of the other way around.

Then he recalled how much he hated Mathematics and Physics classes, which he probably would never have passed if not for the help of…

"Excuse me, Ensign…"

"Hunter."

"From Anthropology class, right? You graduated with me, 2378."

Saul couldn't tell if the Human/Vulcan hybrid recognized him or not. She simply said, flatly, "Can I help you, Ensign?"

"I'm looking for the Chief Astrophysicist's office."

8-Ball pointed at a door, then bypassed him and hurried outside. When it occurred to Saul that he could ask her about Cutter's persona, about how he was perceived by his co-workers nowadays, she was already gone.

'Very well, then.' Saul told himself inwardly. There was no point turning away now.

As he knocked on the door, a specific moment came in mind. It was over four months ago, maybe even five. He was on a 'luxury cruise' on a Starfleet Transport vessel heading for Starbase 212. An annoying Tellarite Ensign which Saul tried to avoid the entire trip just cornered him in an observation lounge, as he inspected a PADD displaying the manifest of the Galaxy.

Eventually, as the conversation came to an end, Saul found a name he was familiar with on the Galaxy's manifest. A name he hasn't thought about for two years, and which threw him completely off balance.

The name that was on the door he was now knocking.

Cutter looked up from his desk, confused over the rapping sound that was pervading his office. He scanned the wall, afraid an engineer had knocked a fluids pipe loose, but then noticed it was coming from the door. What was that, was someone knocking? On a starship?

"Come in."

Saul entered the room, fighting against a burst of frigid air. The office was surprisingly small, considering it was for the Chief Science Officer. The hawkish redesigns had apparently reached this quarter of the ship as well. It was furnished with Starfleet's standard, Cutter having not been around to specify decorations, beige walls, purple carpet with burgandy borders, lighting with a slight yellow tint. In the corner sat a paint gun and a roll of new carpet and padding. ;There was a large desk sitting in the middle of the room and behind it sat Cutter Kara'nin, now Lieutenant and Chief Science Officer of the USS Galaxy.

"They said you were dead." Saul said.

Cutter's eyes closed, his body tightened and relaxed in a heavy sigh. This was obviously not the first time he had heard this statement in the past few hours. "Unfortunately, no," he grumbled, opening his eyes again. When he looked at Saul, his head jerked back in shock as he realized who had entered his office. His blue feathered brow furrowed, then the left rose, the learned behavior of someone who was asked for one too many favors.

"What do you want?" Cutter asked his tone slightly accusatory.

"Why is it so cold in here? It reminds me of my temporary quarters on the Stardrive section." Saul asked, ignoring the alien's question and taking a seat in the extra chair. He eyed the Chief Science Officer intensely.

Cutter snarled, "I was stuck on a mind-numbingly hot desert planet with an annoying Trill, a hyperactive mute human and an overly sensitive, insane Kerelian in blaring, sickening heat. The cold relaxes me."

"Oh. Then you need to crank it lower."

Another snarl. "What are you doing here, Saul? Surely, you've graduated Academy physics by now."

"Yes, I managed to pass them, although in the end I majored Intelligence instead of science." Saul pointed at his black collar. "And you... you're a Lieutenant, department head, no less. I'm tempted to call some friends from the Academy and tell them my tutor back on Freshman year turned out to be the Chief Science Officer of the famous starship Galaxy."

"Well, technically, I'm still dead. Do you have any idea how much paperwork there is to resurrect yourself? Thanking humans and their bureaucracy," he mumbled, turning back to his computer screen.

Saul laughed cheerfully. "Join the club. As for your first question, Kara'nin... the moment I found out you were serving on the ship I was assigned to, I decided that instead of encountering you in random, it would be a better idea to just come and say 'Shalom' in an orderly fashion. Of course, you had to keep me waiting for several months..."

Cutter sighed again, riled at the use of his last name. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"I made all this effort, walking all the way from the Intelligence center just to say hello, and you aren't going to at least say hello back?", Saul teased.

The alien's gaze slowly slid from the computer to Saul, his eyes wide, incredulous, before they rolled in Cutter's typical exaggerated manner. "Tola. Eyn dwondzi? Len?" he said, his arms and wings bouncing in sarcastic play, like a marionette's, then returned solemnly to his paper work.

"Why did you wait 'several months'?" Cutter asked after a moment of silence.

"I arrived just after you left the Galaxy and got yourself stranded on that planet. That's why--"

"No, I mean, Arkedi and Zan are aboard. I would have thought you would have much more interested in hounding her than me, considering."

"Are you serious? Well, I only knew them by their first name, and I guess it's a big ship. I would've noticed two naughty winged officers."

Saul rubbed a finger against his lips. So, the whole trio was on a single ship. How amazing. "How come the three of you ended on the same ship? Is this like Starfleet's official Fruna'lin flagship?"

"Were that the case, this ship would be much more pleasant. I don't know why they came, Arkedi said it was to study linguistics, but he hates Starfleet. I guess if he was going to leave the Fruna systems, he might as well get on my ship. Zan came with him."

"I know you guys good enough to smell a scheme..." Saul grinned mischievously. "What did SHE say she was 'studying'?"

"We're not all as conniving as you, Saul. She obtained a position excavating on Mlintire after our first encounter. Her work on that artifact made quite a splash. She was there for a number of years, came here and last I heard, she was going to have Arku's child," he said, goading Saul over what was possibly his first romantic interest.

Saul raised his eyebrows for a moment. "You don't say? Well, last time I saw them was... god, more than a decade. Don't forget that contrary to yourself, that first time we met was also the last... which reminds me the main reason I came here, other than saying 'shalom' to an old 'acquaintance'."

Saul took a deep breath. He considered this for a long while after finding out that he was going to meet Cutter for the third time. Even the discovery that Arkedi and Zan were also on board didn't change his mind.

"I wanted to tell you that I consider us even, after all that happened before. I managed to graduate despite being the most miserable mathematician ever enrolled to the Academy, and you... well, I don't think either of us owes the other anything anymore, and I thought I might as well put my cards on the table."

This revelation was enough to pull Cutter from his screen. He eyed the human curiously for a moment. "I had no idea I ever owed you anything, Saul. Tell me, what vow did I make to you that I never fulfilled? How did I find myself in this debt?" He folded his fingers, placed his hand squarely on his desk and sat back in his chair, waiting for the show to begin.

Saul folded his arms. "Well, if I recall correctly twelve years ago a little Human kid named Saul Bental gave you and your friend a hand when you guys were in a real mess." Saul glanced around. He didn't want anyone to overhear this, after all both officers had a reputation to keep. "Caused mainly by your uber-passionate archeologist friend, Zan."

The Intelligence officer shrugged slightly. He never actually had to spell it out, and always believed that the two of them had an agreement of silence about what happened. "I believed the only reason you agreed to by my tutor and put up with my attitude back on my first year on the Academy was because you didn't want me to go around and tell everyone that the Fruna'lin cadet was really mischievous in his youth..."

Cutter laughed. "I tutored you because you would not have left me alone if I didn't," he explained, rising from his desk and walking across the room to a chalkboard sized screen on the wall. He took a stylus and began to scrawl in a vertical alien script. "You clearly do not know much about my culture. You chose to help me -- well, you chose to help Zan, I would say because it was the honorable thing to do, but I won't place words in your mouth. We do not owe you anything for your generosity, just as you would never have had to owe me anything for mine at the Academy. I'm glad you agree, no matter how you came to that decision."

A moment passed as he finished his note, then he turned to face Saul again. "Though we Mika'kardi do not make judgments based on someone's past, you humans do. I suppose it was a good thing you did not recite tales of our exploits."

"You know, judging someone based on his deeds in the past isn't a complete mistake." Saul said, smiling thinly as he inspected the script. "Suppose you're an intelligence officer who has to foresee the actions of a certain politician, general or criminal. Your best method of doing that is by analyzing the subject's past and then deduct what his next move might be. People, no matter from what race, don't change their skin overnight. Wouldn't you agree?"

I won't change my skin overnight, Saul mused to himself, and neither would you.

"Twelve years is hardly overnight. But, the youth do change, sometimes quite drastically and often very quickly."

"I realize that, the question is whether other people hearing about our misadventures would realize that as well. But that question will remain hypothetical, I... promise. What did you write there?" Saul asked, changing the subject. He was not in the mood to wax philosophical.

Cutter turned back to the wallscreen briefly, looking over what he had written. "Nothing that would concern you. A note to myself, to check the status of my apartment on Kenara. I hope they didn't resell it because I was dead."

"Worst case scenario, I know a trader which could buy it back and get a good bargain on it." Saul resisted the temptation to wink. "Seems like returning from the dead means a lot of work, I'll leave you to it for the time being - but we will speak again."

Cutter harrumphed as Saul stood, "I'm sure." Saul smiled, threw a little wave and turned to leave. As the doors closed, his computer beeped for an incoming message. Reinstatement of stock shares declined due to persons deceased. Damn the Federation!

"Cat and Mouse"

Principal Characters

Lt. Ella Grey
Flight Officer Angelienia

*****

USS Galaxy
Secondary Hull
Deck XX
Vanguard Flight Deck

Ella frowned slightly at her computer PADD and then the small craft before her. She'd volunteered to help do repairs on the Vanguard fleet, mainly because busy work was always good when she was feeling down, not thinking about what that meant.

'Angel' was stenciled into the side of the ship.

Great, Ella thought but began her inspection anyway. Maybe the bitch wouldn't show up.

Angelienia knew that personnel from Engineering had been posted to work on the squadron's fighters, that had been covered in the briefing yesterday morning. What she hadn't known - and wouldn't have believed even if she'd heard it, was that the Mouse - the *Mouse* - was willing to come here, much less that she would actually work on Angelienia's own fighter.

The Ktarian woman frowned, not caring for a moment that it made her look less attractive. Why was the Mouse here? To sabotage Angelienia's fighter, perhaps? No, no that wouldn't be it. It'd be traced back to her too easily, and that wouldn't do if she wanted to have Victor to herself. Besides, Victor would never stay with anyone that was a murderer - he'd kill them himself as soon as he knew.

Angelienia shivered at the thought of Victor as she'd seen him that day in his quarters, when he'd shattered her without laying a finger on her, just by speaking to her and taking a single step forward. No, he'd never stay with someone that was a murderer. A killer perhaps, someone like him, who knew the thrill of the hunt and the savage touch of victory as your enemy went up in flames - but not a murderer, never a murderer who killed only for personal gain.

So why was the Mouse here then? Angelienia's frown faded. Victor, of course - why else? The Mouse might want to know if Angelienia knew something that she didn't. Or perhaps to even take advantage of the fact that he was still missing to try and learn what Angelienia planned to do when he returned. No matter. The Ktarian woman smiled, sharp teeth gleaming a she started across the Flight Deck. She was going to enjoy watching the Mouse go down in flames.

When she was close enough that Grey couldn't pretend that she didn't hear, Angelienia greeted her. "What a surprise, Lieutenant Mouse. I never thought to see you here, so far from your safe little den in Engineering."

Great, Ella thought. She waved a curt hello at the woman then returned to work.

Still with a smile, Angelienia walked up to look over Ella's shoulder, nothing unusual for a pilot whose craft was being worked on by an unfamiliar mechanic. "Still as chatty as ever, I see," she continued as she peered into the open panels Ella was working on. "Some things never change, I guess."

Ella frowned. She never liked someone watching over her shoulder. She turned to the woman, her eyebrow arched high in a 'is there something I can do for you' manner. She was very proficent in those looks, although her mother was the master of them.

Angelienia smiled back, showing just a fraction more teeth than was appropriate. "Now that, on the other hand, is very good, Mouse. You had a good teacher." The pilot looked into the panels again, her voice suddenly businesslike as she continued, "Did you find the problem with the coolant flow injector, or are you planting a bomb?"

She gestured to the panel to show the woman that she wasn't tampering with it.

With a laugh, the Ktarian woman shook her head. "Don't be silly, Mouse, we both know you wouldn't do that. You're too much the Mouse and beyond that, he couldn't abide it. Killing me that way would lose him for you forever... not that you're ever going to really have him, of course, but the thought that you might is a nice dream, isn't it?"

Ella couldn't help but snort at that but she continued with her job

Green cat's eyes watched Ella work for a moment in silence. "Did you think about him, Mouse? While you were trapped on that planet? Did you wonder where he was, or what happened to him?"

Ella couldn't help the involuntary flicker of emotion that showed upon her face- disgust, sadness, and pain - and decided that she hated the woman more for it.

"Or," Angelienia continued without looking, "did you miss him at all? You were the only woman on that planet, weren't you? Even a Mouse might be queen under such circumstances."

Ella had made the mistake of grabbing for a tool in the middle of this speech. Now it slipped from her hands and she fumbled to grab it before it hit the floor. No such luck. Probably better anyway. She might have been tempted to use it on Angelina. Trying to control her shaking hands and the sudden nausea that had risen, she flipped the woman off.

The pilot blinked once, slowly. "Why so touchy, Mouse? Did I..." She looked at Ella for a moment and a knowing smile touched her lips. "I did... and you did, didn't you?"

*I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT* Ella typed furiously.

"I think you do, Mouse." The smile grew a tiny bit wider and she leaned forward. "Tell me, how did it feel, being the Queen?"

*I WASN'T A QUEEN OF ANYTHING. QUIT TRYING TO ANNOY ME AND LET ME DO MY WORK*

"Really? How sad. Everyone should be a queen once in their lives... even a mouse like you." She studied Ella for a moment. "I can't believe it, though. You wouldn't have wasted that chance, no one would, mouse or no."

*THERE'S NOTHING TO IT, YOU STUPID BITCH* Ella snaped. *WE GOT BY ON CACTUS JUICE AND MUSHROOMS AND WAITED FOR RESCUE. NOTHING HAPPENED SO DROP IT!*

Angelienia's answering laugh was light and quick. "Oh good, you didn't waste it. That's so much better. At least you'll know what you're missing now when I make him mine."

It was a bad idea but she couldn't help herself. She saw her hand suddenly flying out to slap the woman hard. Her mouth opened in a comical 'oh'.

So much for acting like nothing had happened, Ella grumbled to herself.

The Ktarian pilot stood there and looked at her, a handprint slowly appearing on her cheek where Ella had struck her. "Better still," she replied with a grin. "It's gnawing away at you. Why? Why so bothered by it? Because it came to an end too soon?"

Ella felt like screaming. She felt like sobbing. She felt like clobbering the woman over the head with her computer PADD. She did none of these things. Instead she channeled the fury into a beautific smile.

*PESTER ME ALL YOU WANT, ANGIE. I'VE COME CLOSER TO PLACES ON VICTOR THAT YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO TOUCH. WOULD YOU LIKE AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SLEEP NEXT TO HIM? WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE THAT HARD BODY PRESSED UP BESIDE YOU?*

Angelienia's smile widened further. "Oh. So much better, Mouse. But tell me, do you know what it's like to wear his clothes? To feel him wrapped around you, smell his scent covering you? Do you know what it's like to lie in his bed, shaking, too weak to move after he's shattered you?" She leaned close again. "Do you even know what happened to him while you were away being Queen?"

Ella dropped her smile. *WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, FURBALL?*

"You don't, do you?" Angelienia exclaimed, delighted. "You don't know. Of any of it!" She laughed again.

She frowned, knowing that the bitch was playing her but not able to stop herself from her concern. *SO TELL ME.*

"Ask your friend," the Ktarian said. "The Vulcan that tries to act like a human, she knows some of it. Ask someone who went down to Breen, they know things too. Ask the girl with the slanted eyes, Chief Cannon who works in Transporter Room Five, she knows something too." She smiled happily. "and when you know everything, come and ask me what it is that I know that none of them do."

Ella gave her a threatening stare but Angelienia only laughed and walked off. Ella picked up her tricorder furiously. She *would* ask them, damnit, and then come back for another showdown Lt. Angie.

"Good Holiday Spirit"

by
Samantha Widdlestein,
ship pest

****

The Christmas season was in full swing...everywhere except the USS Galaxy.

So far Samantha M. Widdlestein had yet to see any Christmas trees, snowman, Christmas lights, candy canes, carolers, Hanukah candles, milk and cookies, wreaths, wrapping paper doors, jingle bells, tacky ties, or reindeer.

But, more importantly, wasn't anyone going to send her a present this year?

Samantha scowled as she paced her quarters. It seemed that everyone on Galaxy was hell bound and determined to be in full Grinch mode this year. And with Arel on the Miranda and her parents away for the holidays, Samantha needed people to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about her.

They were going to be merry, damnit, even if she had to hold them all at the point of her Hirogen stiletto.

****

Armed with a sack full of goodies, Samantha had been walking up and down the decks of Galaxy for a few hours now. Sure, her Christmas hat was a bit droopy now but she still looked decidedly cute in her red dress and candy stripped stockings.

Having run out of cookies a few decks ago, she was now handing out jingle bells. And taping up 'merry christmas' signs on every door. And inviting people to see the nativity- which had been a real bitch to set up- that she had made in the arboretum.

And reminding everyone that she was a little girl all alone for the holidays and in need of presents. Lots of them.

Of course there had been a few snags. The engineers had yelled at her for trying to wrap the warp core in garland and Counseling hadn't been too crazy about all the mistletoe she'd tacked up (Sam had told them it was aromatherapy) but all in all, everything had worked out. She hadn't brought out the big guns yet.

However...

"Just one little 'ho ho ho' sign?" Samantha said in her sweetest voice.

"No."

"A candy cane?"

"No."

"Mistletoe."

"NO!"

"You're a dic..." Samantha had started to bellow when a neighbor came to see what the fuss was about. "

"This little brat is harassing me." He said.

"He won't let me put up some decorations on his door." Sam said in her best little girl pout. Sure it was a low blow but even Arel had said that you had to work with what you had. Sure, she'd said it with a lot more swear words with that but the message was still the same.

The neighbor made a sympathetic noise and shot daggers at the man with her eyes. Sam tried not to gloat too much as allowed her eyes to water slightly. The woman moved to hug her.she continued.

"I just wanted everyone to be happy." Samantha sniffed.

This put the woman even further on her side but the man only rolled his eyes. "Oh please."

Sam scowled over the woman's shoulder and then continued in her best baby voice. "Some people are just soooo inconsiderate."

"I know, Honey." The woman said.

The man just snorted and Sam realized that he just wasn't going to play. Well fine then. It was time for the big guns. "Fine then, Mister. I won't put up any decorations on your door."

"Finally, she..." He started before Sam opened her mouth and started to shriek.

"JOY TO THE WORLD!" Samantha began to shriek. "THE LORD HAS COME.."

The man covered his ears at the sound. Even the woman had jumped back in surprise. Both couldn't believe that such an awful sound could come out of a little girl.

"What the fu...." The man bellowed.

"Ssh." Sam snapped."I'm caroling. Let earth recieve her KIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGG."

The lady started to put her hands up to her ears and then realized that it was rude.

"LET EVERY HEART, PREPARE HIM ROOM." Sam continued to sing, her face beginning to turn red.

"It's not going to work." The man scowled but even he looked doubtful.

"AND HEAVEN AND NATURE SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNG, THE GLORIES OF OUR LOOOOOOOORRD" Samantha sang, her voice not unlinke fingers on a chalk board. Or like a child with a shrill voice screaming with all her might.

"That's not even the right line." The man complained, wincing.

"AND NATUUUUUUUUUUUUURE SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNGGGG!" Sam finished.

There was a delicate pause where both adults visably relaxed, which was when she sprung.

"OH COOOOME ALL YEEEEE FAITHEFUL" Samantha SCREAMED.

"Dear God, let her put up the decorations." The woman said.

****

Another half of a song later, the man's door was decorated with two 'merry christmas' and five candy canes.

Samantha skipped along merrily to the next deek.

"Another Human Festival?"

Ensign Miramon Terrik,
Flight Control Officer

-------------

Miramon was sat in Ten Forward, back aboard the Galaxy once more, since the group that had headed to Bajor had now returned aboard ship, meeting back with the ship en route to their next mission. He hadn't yet had time to check up on the mission for the next week or however long it was likely to take, but neither him nor Sh'laren were supposed to meet up with Lieutenant Savoie for their departmental briefing until tomorrow, so it could wait for now.

Dinner had been rather pleasant, for a change - Garlic chicken served on a bed of noodles, along with a glass of a excellent Australian Shiraz. Yeah, okay, it was synthehol, but it still tasted good. And, to be honest, it was one of the first meals he'd really actually enjoyed since Havras. The clean-up afterward, the trip aboard the Valkyrie and, of course, the events that occured on Bajor themselves hadn't left much time for him to get himself centred. And eating was one of the true pleasures of life.

Staring out of the window, simply more engaged in his thoughts than in any use of situational awareness, he was unaware of some of the various work going on around him. Somebody had managed to procure a ladder and was in the middle of hanging up long threads of some unusual type of coloured decoration - some of it blue, then with shades of green, gold, silver and so on.

Hearing a clatter behind him as the ladder moved into place just next to the window, Miramon was startled into awareness, then turned around and watched several crewman, all plain clothed and bustling about Ten Forward, much to the amusement of most of the people there to relax. He looked up at the guy on the ladder and watched him pin more of the coloured decoration to the grey, austere walls of the room.

"What the heck are you doing?"

The crewman looked down to see the Bajoran staring up at him with a curious glance, then took a few steps down the ladder to come down to eye level with the taller officer.

"Sorry, sir. We're just putting up Christmas decorations."

"I beg your pardon? Christmas?"

Frankly, the Bajoran was confused. Admittedly, he'd lived amongst humans for many years, but for the most part, hadn't really bothered with their customs or festivals, since Bajoran religion had more than enough for two or three different races to deal with, and as a result, he only observed those - hence why the dates of such festivals were the only ones he really took notice of.

"Yes sir. It's coming up shortly. We're just getting ready for the parties that we're having around here. Traditional, you know?"

Miramon felt puzzled by this, but nodded absently. "Another human festival? Sheesh - didn't we just have, um, halloween not long ago?

"Halloween? Last month, sure. But that's hardly Christmas. Halloween is mainly for kids and for those young at heart. Christmas is for everyone."

"Oh, right. Like Ha'mara and the Gratitude Festival?"

Now it was the crewman's turn to look confused. "The what, sir?"

Miramon shook his head. Starfleet really ought to do more about these kinds of things. Bajor was a Federation member, admittedly, but then again, Terrik didn't know Christmas, so how he could expect the crewman to know Ha'mara, he couldn't rightly say.

"Forget it. Anyway, sorry for disturbing you."

The crewman nodded, then stepped down and picked up the ladder and began moving it elsewhere in the room. Miramon shook his head and grinned. If there was a party to be had, he had best get himself updated on Human customs. The computer could tell him, but it was probably best to go ask a human. Standing up, he headed out of Ten Forward to go and hunt for Saul. Heck, if a human intel officer couldn't tell him what Christmas was, what the heck were they celebrating for?

"Stress Release"

Lt. Jg. Cora Dobryin
Ensign Paulo DiMillo

Since her return from that disastrous training mission, Cora had a huge list of things to accomplish. Somewhere near the top of that was a meeting with Paulo DiMillo. She left a message indicating she'd like to speak to him as soon as feasibly possible.

Paulo had gotten the message and was now heading towards the Intel offices. His jacket hung on his shoulders unzipped as he walked. He had started to wonder if it was such a good idea to coming back. There were rumors circulating around the ship of what he had done. Most where way off, but a few were close, close enough that Paulo wondered if someone had let something slip. He now had a long list of enemies at Starfleet Intelligence, so it could be any number of people. Paulo entered the Intel offices and zipped his jacket up. He walked over and hit the chime button to notify the Lt. he was there.

"Enter," Cora called.

Paulo entered. "Ensign DiMillo reporting as ordered."

She waited for Paulo to enter then directed him to an empty seat, "Would you like something to drink?"

"Coffee," Paulo said as he took a seat.

Cora replicated a coffee and a raktajino then returned to her chair after anding one mug to Paulo. "Welcome back. I know there are rumors flying about but I won't let that continue. Thats not something I tolerate when it comes to a member of my department. You've been punished enough."

"Well I don't think to many people agree with you, but thank you for the support."

"They can jump out the nearest airlock for all I care, I'm the one who runs this department. Its good to have a friendly face back," Cora replied.

That was the one thing he missed from being on the Galaxy, Cora. They had worked well together and he respected her. Currently she was probably the only other Intelligence officer in Starfleet he trusted. "That it is." Paulo replied sipping from his coffee.

"So now that you're back I have a feeling Intel is going to be busy," she continued, "Anything else I need to know before we move on?"

"Besides that I have list all trust in my contacts, not really." Paulo paused a second. "Oh, that I am still working on finding my sister and whoever got away from the Romulans, but I wont let that affect my duties aboard the Galaxy."

Cora smiled, "Losing faith in contacts isn't anything new in this business. Difficult to have to face yes but it happens. Now onto the news for Galaxy. Ensign Saul Bental was assigned to this dept while you were away. Get to know him. We've got a potential powder keg from out last mission I have a sinking feeling and so far most everyone wants to look the other way. I refuse to just do that."

"What happened last mission? I haven't be able to catch up on all the logs, and mush is classified and with my restricted security level I can't get accesses to them"

"Oh how restricted and how long will that remain in effect? If I have to pull strings to get that lifted I will. SF Command wants to sweep our encounter at Havras under the rug... its almost certain the t'Kith'kin and their allies will be back."

"I have no idea, most people back at SFI don't like me and don't like the fact that I have been given a commission back. Whoever pulled strings to get me this posting must have pulled a lot." Paulo took a second to take a sip of his coffee. "From what I hear about the t'Kith'kin I would have to say you are right, and it would be soon. Something sooner then when we had our first contact with the Borg at Wolf359 after the Enterprise-D encountered them in the Delta Quadrant."

"Most people at SFI are idiots there the ones pushing to make our encounter at Havras Classified and if it erupts into a full scale war I'm going to string up more than a few heads there. Let me worry about getting your clearances back. Someone saw fit to give you your commission back and I won't have one of my officers restricted from being a productive member of my team."

Paulo smiled. It was good to be back, even though it seemed Cora was strung high as it was. Something was wrong, his Intel training told him that. "Thank you," Paulo finally said deciding not to push it.

Just then Cora winced slightly and failed to hide it. "Well I'm serious about that. Are you settling in okay other than that?"

"Yeah, besides having to talk to a counselor once a month and checking it with security to make sure I haven't done anything that I am not supposed to. I guess hacking my way into records would be out of the question for now," Paulo said with a smile. "Okay, what is wrong?" He asked. He couldn't hold it back anymore, something was really bothering her.

"Sorry was hoping not to let my own problems get in the way but thats not going to happen," Cora smiled, "Severely bruised ribs or something from a training exercise gone bad. I didn't expect this stint with the Hazard Team to be easy and I was prepared for it to be daunting after SFI training and their version of Hell Week but this one takes the cake and it crossed the line into illegal big time. I'd like to throttle a few DI's about now."

Paulo nodded. He had heard some rummers about what happened, but hadn't heard anything solid. "Maybe we should both take a trip to the holodeck to take our anger out. I had a few counselor's suggest that."

"Normally I'd say thats a bunch of psychobabble but I'm willing to try anything right now," Cora answered him honestly.

Paulo had to agree with her. He wasn't big on taking his anger out on holograms, but it did sound like a good idea.

"Lets go see what we can accomplish with a holodeck," she got up from her desk.

Paulo took the last swig off his coffee and got up and opened the door to her office, letting her lead the way.

Cora exited Intel with brief orders for someone to page her if anything urgent arose. At the moment she considered this conversation and holodeck session with Paulo the most important thing on her list.

Paulo followed her. He got a few weird stares from a few of the other crewman in Intel, but he didn't let it stop him. He did literally want to punch anyone who gave him a cross look, but he wouldn't. He really didn't want to go back to that hell whole. He followed her in silence till they got to the holodeck.

"You pick the setting and I"ll put in the parameters for my DI," Cora smiled slightly.

"Computer start a new program with the following parameters. I want a cave setting with torches for light. Make the cavern a circular shape with a radius at the extreme of 50 meters. Don't make it a perfect circle." Paulo paused for a second till the computer beeped. "Also include a humanoid with pointy ears and a thick beard. He is about two meters tall with average build for that height. The skin is pail in color, with a hint of blue, and he has bright red eyes. All other details randomize."

"Computer add a second humanoid height approximately 6 ft 1 in., dark hair with hazel eyes. Dress as a standard SF DI. All other details randomize."

The computer beeped, ["program complete, enter when ready."]

The two of them walked in to find their orients. "Computer set combat difficulty to about average strength of these two humanoids." The computer beeped in reply. Paulo took off his jacket and dropped it to the floor beside him. He looked at the figure he had created. It was scary how close it was to whoever had tortured him, ire in fact. He had no idea what race they were, and nether did the Romulans which made it more ire.

Cora removed her own jacket then sized up her designated opponent. For once she didn't separate personal emotion from the equation. Rage and a vast tangle of other feelings raced through Lt. Dobryin as she stood there preparing for the sparring match to come. It wasn't long before Cora made the first move.

As soon as Cora had made her move, Paulo's opponent made hes, lunging at Paulo with full force. Paulo quickly dodged the punch and was able to trip his much larger opponent, using his own speed against him. Paulo quickly turned around and used both hands to strike a blow to the back, knocking him forcefully to the ground. Paulo stood back as his opponent stood back up, but this time Paulo made the move, charging full force, using his own body and speed as the means to hit him. This caused his opponent to get pissed and to try and plant one in his face, but missing as Paulo planted his fist in his gut.

The holographic DI fought back with a vengeance and Cora ducked out of range just in time. She retaliated with a well placed kick followed by a powerful kick and punch combination. Only satisfied when her opponent had landed flat on his back on the mat. Now it was time for the next round as he stood back up.

They both continued to fight for the next 30 minutes. Paulo sat back taking a break. "I think I got that out of my system," he told Cora who was sitting across from him, equally as tired.

Cora had to admit it felt good but she was now extremely tired, "Feeling better she asked. I probably need to get back to the Intel office or at least let someone know I intend to take much needed break for a nap. Since that training I haven't slept very well."

"I can imagine," Paulo said as he stood up, then leaning over to help Cora up. They both grabbed their jackets and headed out of the holodeck. "Computer end and delete program," Paulo said.

"Holiday drunks"

Ensign Airaul Taern,
Tactical Officer

Ensign Andrei Vronsky,
Medical Officer

"You seemed to be interested in what was said during the tour," Andrei said, smiling to the other man. He sipped his own drink, enjoying the richness of it. The bar around them was becoming decorated for Christmas, which was oddly enough soothing. "And to pick up the atmosphere in sickbay as well. I am impressed...not many men I know would be like that."

Airaul looked across at him with a small smile, sipping his drink. "I am used to reading people."

"You do it a lot?" Andrei asked him, chuckling warmly. "Maybe that's why it went so well...with you, me and the other guy joking."

Airaul grinned to that, leaning forward enthusiastically. "A laugh and joke does more for an atmosphere than anything else."

"I know. I work in sickbay after all," Andrei said innocently, winking at him. He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the music in the background before opening them to look at Airaul. "So where are you from?"

"Aubis." Airaul said lightly, but not expecting him to really know much about it...after all, it kept itself to itself. "And you are from Russia...?"

"Good guess...and a correct one as well," Andrei said, nodding as he held his eyes. "Aubis, you say? Is that the one with the civil war?" He remembered reading something about it, long ago, yet he was uncertain about the name.

"That's right," he said with a sigh, looking down. It was sad that it was the only thing his culture was known for...however, they deserved it.

Andrei frowned, reaching out to touch his arm. "I'm sorry...it just popped up in my head. I didn't mean to cause any offence..."

"No!" Airaul looked up to him with near alarm, offering a bright, warm smile. "Really, no offence taken."

"Are you sure?" Andrei said, with a slight frown. "I saw how your face fell."

Airaul looked back to his drink, tipping the glass to see the liquid move with it. "Really. I was just thinking it was a shame that it was the first impression we gave everyone. Just...war."

"War is something many think about if you say 'Earth'. Or used to," Andrei said, sipping his own drink. He looked down. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault." Airaul replied with a firm nod. "I am proud of who and what I am."

"A soldier?" Andrei said, looking at him with a small smile. "Hardly a doctor, I see. Your edge is too..." he searched for a word. "Rough."

"Thank you," Airaul grinned, leaning comfortably back in his seat. "Yes, I became a soldier for my leader."

Andrei smiled at that, studying the way he sat. All confidence...like a wolf or a large cat. He had seen him move like that as well. All grace and confidence and raw strength. Andrei, who was slight compared to this man, envied that. He lacked the strength and even the grace. "Who is your leader?"

"Revalis Sylaen." Airaul gave a fond smile at the mention of his name. "He was chased out of his Empire, but now he will claim it back."

"Good for him," Andrei said, giving him a warm smile. "We should drink for that."

"Yes!" He smiled warmly, lifting his glass. "To...the Revalis. The true Revalis."

"The true Revalis!" Andrei agreed, before draining his glass easily.

Airaul reached for the bottle, refilling their glasses. He lifted his own again, thinking as he watched him uncertainly. "And...to...Russia...?"

"To Russia," Andrei agreed, smiling warmly as he winked.

Airaul smiled warmly, drinking the liquid down. "Where I am from, we drink to everything...from our leader to our pets...any excuse to drink."

"We drink to keep the cold out...even before a fireplace," Andrei said, smilingw armly to him. "We drink to art, to love, to literature...we drink to mothers, sisters, fathers. brothers...mother-in-laws..."

"Mother-in-laws?" Airaul watched him with interest. "Isn't there a...joke about them?"

"Many jokes," Andrei said with a warm smile, nodding. "Thousands...millions. They are foul creatures that come and rip your throat out..." he winked playfully.

Airaul grinned, shaking his head with a rich chuckle. "Now I doubt that is true..."

"It isn't...but there is no one as frightening, I am told," Andrei shrugged, smiling as he watched him. "I almost found out myself...although I found her rather sweet."

"You were going to marry?" He asked with surprise, leaning forward with curiosity.

"Yes...well, I planned it anyway. I was going to marry this girl at the Academy. Obviously, I didn't," Andrei said, chuckling as he arched a brow.

"May I ask why not?" Airaul asked gently. "If not...tell me to be quiet..."

Andrei smiled to him, sipping his drink. "It was a bit too much of an impulse for her. Her name was...and is, Akane. She's Japanese...we met at the Academy and became a couple. I asked her to marry me a few months later. I thought she was the one. She didn't agree. Well, she did the first month. Until her sister came over and talked some...sense into her."

"A...whirlwind romance...is that what you call it?" Airaul asked, a little unsure on the term.

"I suppose," Andrei said, smiling to him. "But I'm like that, I'm told. I get carried away easily."

"There is nothing wrong with that." He assured with a small smile. "It sounds romantic."

"That's me to a T," Andrei said, blushing as he met his eyes. "And impulsive. Very impulsive. And occasionally drunk."

"Always drunk...that is better!" Airaul agreed wtih a grin, eagerly catching his glass up.

Andrei nodded, knocking back his drink and reaching for the bottle again. "We should get drunk together. Often."

"It seems it would be a good partnership..." Airaul clinked his glass against Andrei's.

"I agree," Andrei said, smiling warmly as he held his eyes, before drinking down the alcohol.

Airaul gave a firm nod, drinking his own back. "I think you must be a good doctor."

"A drunk doctor anyway," Andrei said, shaking his head with a small smile. "I'm decent...Planning to become better though."

"You seem to care. You are a passionate person...a person of real emotion. I think that is needed in a good doctor." Airaul looked down with a soft smile. "Of course...I don't know much about them."

"I have a feeling you know a lot about a lot of things, Airaul," Andrei said, smiling warmly to him. "But for now, let's drink to what *I* know. And Christmas. We must drink to a merry Christmas for everyone!"

(backpost--begins at wasteland1)

"Session one"

Ensign Colby Elliot,
Assistant Chief of Operations

So here this guy, walking through the ship, his head low as he does it. Moving away from the operations center, walking quickly but not running, not yet anyway but you can tell by his walk, the way he moves while he does it, that he wants to run. His arms over his chest move a little, almost like he is rubbing the cold out of himself but really just because he is nervously fidgeting. Colby, Colby Elliot the operations chief’s assistant, is ready to jump out of his skin at any moment and while he isn’t fully aware of it anyone who sees him is.

Colby left his duty station earlier and made his way for his room, once he was there he paced around for five minutes that for him felt like five hours. After the pacing he stuffed his belongings into a duffle bag, pulled it over his shoulder and walked to the door. Colby’s packing and his pacing had taken place in his dark room, not bothering to turn the lights on as he did it. When the door opened to the outside world, the Galaxy’s corridors, a flood of bright light cut through the darkness like a razor knife though a melting pat of butter. Colby looked around the corridor, not leaving the safety of his dark room. The operations officer looked like a man standing at the precipice of a cliff, looking down at the ugly drop in front of him. His eyes searching the air, the hall, and everything else that surrounded him, for answers, he didn’t have any and looking out now he didn’t find any.

-Shuttle Bay One-

“And then I got this,” Colby said handing the shuttle manager and PADD.

“The fuck is this?” the man asked in a disgusted tone. He had every right to be annoyed, this was not his shift and Colby had just woken him from a very fulfilling nap and dreams about naked large breasted woman.

“Exit permission,” Colby said, sounding ten tons of dead. His face was dead set, dead carved from stone and flat, he looked like he sounded. The big man didn’t stand as his face, he was swaying slightly, like an Olympic runner on his mark, on his set and waiting like hell for the go so he could do just that. “I’m taking that one,” Colby said as he moved toward one of the long range shuttles, moving passed the shuttle manager.

“Shit,” the guy sighed as he tapped his commlink. This was a real drag for him, he could have been sleeping, thinking about tits for a good hour before having to get up and report in and he could have had a lot of mental breasts in that hour and now this dead man wanted to get a shuttle. “I need a shuttle pilot to the bay, someone’s got a ticket out.”

“Which one?”

“Ono,” the man said as he moved back toward his office, let the guy wait by himself, he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about shit anyway. “she’ll be here soon, you’ll like her, she’s got big tits.”

Colby looked back to the manager, he had moved to stand by7 the long range shuttle but was not so far away that he couldn’t hear the shuttle bay manager. Looking at the old man he never blinked, just starred him down.

I am talking to a dead man, the shuttle manager thought to himself. I mean I said it before, he’s a dead man looking like that, dead, but that was just descriptive metaphorical crap, that big white sonofabitch is dead, she’s giving a ride to a dead man.

Colby turned away from the manager after he turned away from him. Colby closed his eyes and lowered his head, trying to think about anything other then what was happening. He couldn’t do it. His mind was about a ba-jillion miles away and he couldn’t break his thoughts from that place and the person there.

“You know I’ll always love you….”

“Just get in your car and go, don’t worry about me, don’t worry about him, just go…”

“Colby….”

“Jesus man, delayed reaction….”

“Why….why did you do it? You could have been great…” “I don’t want your li……”

Colby pulled himself out of broken flashes and clips of life and rolled his eyes and his head and he tried to jerk himself back into the here and now and found that he couldn’t quite do it. He looked around and while he could hear the old man snoring in his office and could here the pilot coming down the deck toward him he could still hear murmurs of the past. In his mind he saw the present and in his heart he lives the past.

Of all the things he had done in his life he valued very few of them, enjoyed fewer and would chose to remember even fewer then that. In high school they had called the big mad a jock, a dumb man who took the pig skin to the end, grabbed that misshaped ball and hauled his bulk across the green fields toward the posts, breaking anything that got in his way, the ugly and the beautiful breaking as he forced his might past. That had been his life, moving fast and breaking everything around him as he did. Colby looked morbidly at his hands, the hands that had broken everything they had touched for so many years, the big hands that had clumsily crushed the world they had built for him.

Colby had pushed his way into college, smashing his way through the smaller and lesser men and coming into that world he had found himself both lost and at home for the first time all at the same time. Familiar and alien all smashed into one. The breaking, hurting, and leaving power of his youth that had made him, defined him and built him, now seemed trivial. Who he was, what he did and all of it was tossed to the wind and while he felt totally lost in the storm that pulled his life from him he found who he really was, but as the problem often is when we find who we are and that person is not who we expected we don’t always fall right in with that.

Colby went on pushing, breaking, hurting and smashing, pushing his large body further and further. Gaining muscle, cords of strength running through his body. His years passed quickly and slowly at once and it wasn’t long before Colby found himself at the edge, the precipice of his life. Then it had seems immense and he foolishly thought it could never be greater then it was then at that moment. He had found a bigger cliff today. Colby was a player, he called himself a gladiator, a fighter, a runner, a soldier, and most of all he call himself a real man. He called himself all those things knowing each one was a lie, a lie about what he did and who he was. Pushing himself to maintain the man he was, not the man he would be.

Colby closed his eyes, biting down on his cheek, trying to keep himself in the here and now and not the then. Looking to the shuttle pilot he tried to smile but it was a sick affair.

“You’re lucky,” the shuttle pilot said as she smiled, seeing his distraught expression she tried to smile big enough for both of them.

Colby would have laughed had he been able to do anything but breath, he was a million fucking miles from lucky.

“The Galaxy is about to take off and go after Breen as I understand, if you got your little not any earlier you would have been stuck here.” The female shuttle pilot said as she keyed her clearance code on the shuttle’s side panel and the door opened. She looked at Colby and tried her smile again, seeing it didn’t work she stepped up into the shuttle, “Step into my parlor.”

Colby looked around the shuttle bay then stepped into the shuttle.

Colby smashed his helmet against a metal pole, the post was not the smartest thing to pick a fight with but he wanted to get pumped up, wanted to get ready. He looked over the others in their helmets and pads, their numbers on the backs of their shirts.

“Let’s get some!” a big dark man screamed beside Colby.

“Yeah!” the others grunted in unison.

The man who Colby had been Shouted with them, grunting and screaming and spitting and flexing and pumping himself up for the fight outside. The man who Colby had grown to become cursed the men around him and cursed football.

“And were’ out,” the flight officer said as she brought the shuttle out of the Galaxy’s shuttle bay, vering around the ship’s third nacelle as she moved the shuttle to a safe distance from the ship and the station it was docked with. A moment later the ship went to warp, the stars flashing like projection lamps.

The projection lamps shined down on the cut grass as Colby and the rest of his team moved out onto the field. All around them fans screamed, for them this was the coliseum, the Olympics and a rock show all in one. The stood up, screaming and cheering and flashing, the power of the field was overwhelming and for a moment Colby stood humbled by the power of it, the people watching and the people who would fight for their amusement and he felt shame for what he would do.

Colby moved and ducked down his head into the huddle as the HNIC called out the play, telling the players what they would do, who they would break to get through and how they would win. “And keep Elliot looking good,” the man said, as he smiled his white teeth stood in high contrast of his dark skin. “His scout is watching and if he wants to go pro then he best make the man happy.”

Colby smiled and totally unlike the man he was now said, “You bet your ass I’m going to make that man smile,” Colby boasted, “He’ll be happier with me then a topless cheerleader.”

The shuttle’s time passed quickly as Colby drifted in and out of thoughts of the past. He knew the pilot was trying to talk to him but he had nothing to say, nothing he could say, nothing he had ever done had meant anything and to be someone you had to mean something. He meant nothing, nothing but destruction and hurt.

Colby yanked the oblong ball from the hand of one of his players and moved toward the end zone. He could hear the fans screaming like a chourus of mad crazy bastards, he could hear his team cheering him on, heard the coach yelling at him to go go just fucking go, he could hear the opposing team scream curses as they moved toward him happy to end his life in order to stop the ball, he heard all of that and none of it while he ran, just ran. This was it, the breaker, the touchdown that would lose or win the game. Colby had the ball and he held it against his mass as he moved down the field like a freight train. Now he had it all, had the crowd, had the team, had the ball, he was god of everything. This was how Jesus felt, the savior of everyone, the power of god and the will of man. Colby could feel his sweat rolling into the back of his helmet, spit flying from his mouth as he screamed down the grass, his cleats tearing chunks of it out as he moved. One of the great Titans. Colby closed his eyes and let one foot drag and then it was over.

It only took one wrong footfall, one slip, one wrong move and it was over. Colby held the ball as hard as he could to keep the illusion going. The world flashed like a bomb as he was hit by two men that felt like Chevy vans. Colby opened his eyes and watched as he went down, grass and dirt jamming its way between the small bars of his helmet and hitting him in the face. Once down he could feel what felt like the rest of the opposing team and half his team land on him. And then the game was over, that easy, he was down and it was over, he wasn’t god, he wasn’t a Titan and the life he had lead until now was over.

"Session two"

Colby Elliot

“Why….why did you do it? You could have been great…”

Colby jerked forward in the chair and looked around the cockpit of the shuttle. They weren’t moving and like someone who is woken from a nap that’s gone too long Colby felt disoriented and lost. Looking around he grimaced and brought a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it in an attempt to get he dull pain to leave it.

“We’re here, Ensign.” The flight officer said, looking from her chair to Colby.

“Already?” Colby asked. His voice was grogy and he looked like a lost kid, felt like a lost kid for that matter. The thought that he had slept through most of it didn’t occur to him.

“Well, Starbase one,” she explained. “You’ll have to ride a transit shuttle down to the planet.”

The planet. But then that made sense, while call it anything but ‘the planet’ if you were alien. You wouldn’t call your pal’s house your house, you wouldn’t call a stranger’s car anything but a car, it wasn’t yours, no need to apply a name to it. Sure, it made sense but calling it the planet did nothing for Colby’s sense of being out of place.

Colby rubbed his eyes with small twelve year old eyes as he came down the stairs into the kitchen. The yelling had woken him and his childhood innocence had not known any reason not to move out of bed. Avoiding the dark monsters that lived under his bead he jumped out, landing far away from their reach, quickly he grabbed the flashlight from his dresser and turned it on, shining the light over his closet door, making sure it was still shut and the boogeyman was locked out of his room. That checked he set the light back and pushed open his door and moved slowly down the hall, his small feet making no sound on the thick carpet. Colby wrapped his arms around the railing and looked down the steps, pushing his head between the bars trying to see what the yelling was about but he couldn’t. Colby pulled his head back and let go of the rail and moved down the steps, his right hand rubbing his eyes while his left hand gripped his teddy bear. Walking down the steps into the kitchen Colby froze, hot yellow piss running down his leg as his bladder let go.

“Oh…oh god,” his mother said as she began to weep, her eye bruised, her arms battered and bleeding, the man who she had married towering over her, holding his belt firmly in his right hand.

“Mommy,” Colby called out as he ran toward his mother.

“Careful,” Colby’s father said as he dropped to his knees, catching Colby before he could reach his mother. “Your mother didn’t clean the floor today,” he said with a tone that nearly froze the air, giving a gaze to his wife that was overwhelmingly contemptuous. “She slipped and hurt herself, you don’t want to slip on the floor do you champ?” he asked, giving his son a smile.

“But mommy,” Colby said, tears building in his eyes and he reached for his mother.

“I said she feel,” the father said as he squeezed Colby.

Colby squinted against the pain and gasped for air, suddenly growing dizzy. He stretched but his little boy arms couldn’t reach her. He struggled but he couldn’t best his father’s strength. If he was stronger he could beat his father, he could save his mother if he was strong, like the football players on TV. “Mommy,” Colby said, beginning to cry as he stretched for his mother.

“I’m…” his mother tried to speak around her own sobs, hers of pain, Colby’s of sorrow and desperation. “I’m ok my sweet boy,” she said beginning to ball, “I just fell.”

“That’s right,” Father said coldly as he picked up his son, “Now let’s go back to bed champ.” He said as he moved up the stairs.

“Mommy,” Colby said as he stretched for his mother, watching her as he was moved away from her up the stairs then into his room. Once inside the room Colby’s father hurled Colby into the bed.

Colby bounced on the bed, his wind being blown from him as he landed/ The world around him went hazy and he felt sick to his stomach and dizzy, he tried to get a grip on the side of the bed but couldn’t he rolled backward, laying flat on the mattress and unable to sit upright.

“You mother fell,” Colby’s father said darkly. To Colby his face changed, becoming black and terrible and worse then anything that lurked beneath his bed and locked inside the closet. He paced around the bed, looking down in disgust at his son. “Did you want to fall and hurt yourself too?” he asked, moving closer to Colby.

Colby’s face scrunched as he cried, he tried to move backward, move away from the monster that had taken place of his father but he was frozen in place, stuck to the place on the bed. Colby shook his head, wanted to say no, no he didn’t want to fall but no words came out, fear had robbed him of his voice.

“Did you?” Colby’s father persisted.

As he shouted, Colby could feel the heat of his breath, could smell the foul stink of an evil he would later come to know as the stink of cheap whisky. Colby coughed and hiccupped as he sobbed, shaking his head franticly, trying to recoil from his father as he did so.

“Answer me!” Colby’s father shouted, spit dripped from his mouth as he swaggered around the room, dancing the drunk’s shuffle.

“No,” Colby finally cried out, barely louder then the meek cry of a mouse. “No daddy, I don wanna to fall,” Colby said shaking his head and crying, “I don wanna, I don wanna.”

Colby’s father smiled with terrible glee, his eyes holding all the secrets of whisky, “Then listen to me when I talk to you boy.” He stood a moment longer, staring down his terrified son, before walking out of the room. As he moved out of the room he looked down at the nightlight plugged into the wall, “You ain’t no fag boy,” he said leaning down and tearing the light from the socket and standing up again, “You don’t need this,” he said then grabbed the flashlight from the dresser, “Or this.”

Colby pulled the sheets over his head, hiding beneath the blankets, wanting to shut the world out with them.

Colby looked down at the Earth below. He stood in the main docking hub for the transit shuttles, he had been here for half an hour and he was beginning to get impatient. He needed to be home now, he NEEDED it, this wasn’t a vacation. “Excuse me,” Colby said in a low tone.

“Yes,” a man in a white uniform sitting behind a desk asked looking up at Colby, “Can I help you?”

“When is the next shuttle getting here?” Colby asked. His tone was dead, which was good on one had, it kept him from yelling at the asshole behind the desk and kept him from demanding a shuttle.

The man shrugged then looked at his computer screen, “It should arrive shortly.” He said before picking up his book.

“How shortly?” Colby asked.

“Oh I don’t know,” the man said, unhappy with being jerked from his book, “Maybe five minutes.” He said looking towards the window, “You’ll see it coming, so why don’t you go by the window and wait big guy.”

“Thank you.” Colby said walking toward the window.

Colby stuffed his clothes into suit cases and duffle bags. Without grace or care he tossed the bags onto his bed the started filling the other bags. He was like a machine, a packing machine, just stuffing things where they fit and then moving on to the next vessel to stuff things into. Once he was done with suit cases he moved to boxes, boxing up the last of his belongings before tapping the boxes closed.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Colby’s father asked as he stumbled down into Colby’s room, a half empty bottle of whisky in his hand. His head was cocked to one side and he looked like a man ready to fight, standing his ground like a boxer but with the limp stance of a man who has already been beaten but cannot or will not fall down.

“Leaving,” Colby said as he pulled the straps of a couple duffle bags over his shoulders then picking up two suit cases and moving toward the door.

The shuttle moved out of the docking color and made a slow one hundred and eighty degree turn. Now facing Earth it began to pick up speed.

“We’ll be moving in to Earth’s atmosphere at 1400hours, we’ll land on San Francisco’s landing zone,” the pilot said, sounding more like a flight attendant then a shuttle pilot.

Colby had found a seat next to a window and sat down, still restlessly moving under his skin, wanting everything to move faster so he could get down there and find out what had happened and deal with it in anyway he could. Shifting around in his seat he was like a kid who’d been on a car too long. But even with his sifting and his anxiousness his face was still flat and dead, staring off into nothingness, his thoughts lost in the past while mixing with the present.

Elliot ran a hand through his hair as he sat in the car, it was his first time driving alone and he had come home sooner then he had thought he would. He had always looked at cars as freedom, a means of escape whenever he wanted and as something to do in this dull section of the planet. But he didn’t find it to be that exactly, he had driven around in the present from his father, a present for making the football team again this year, something his father was more proud of and happy with then Colby was himself. Colby had gone out and have driven for a while but didn’t find it to be everything he thought it would have been and because of that he brought himself home and looking out at it in his windshield he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. His doors were closed but that didn’t matter, he could still hear his father screaming and his mother crying. And if he couldn’t, if he hadn’t actually heard it his mind would have found it and replayed it, he had heard this all too often.

Colby gripped the steering wheel and cried and clenched his jaw to fight off screaming himself. He could see their shadows on the curtains, his mother falling to the floor under the striking of his father’s hand. Colby from his car like a viewer of the sickest most violent driving in movie. He squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles turned while and he could hear the carbon fiber that made up the wheel cracking, giving way to his grip. His body screamed and jolted as he held himself in place. Get out. Colby shook his head, tears running down from his eyes like waterfalls. Get Out! “I can’t,” Colby wept. GET OUT! NOW!

Colby grabbed the door handle and yanked it nearly hard enough to tear it off the door panel. He threw open the door and the hinge let out a dry squeaking hurt cry but Colby heard nothing but the pounding of his shallow heart as he moved for the door. BOOM BOOM BOOM His heart fired like a cannon, his ears felt numb with the sound of it as he moved toward the house, every part of him wanting to run from the monster inside but his heart commanding him ever forward.

“Touching down now.”

Colby looked up, broken from his thoughts. Looking around the shuttle his eyes searched the area like he was looking for waldo. What he was looking for was someone who had known him someone, anyone, from his past. He want to find someone, wanted one of them to find him so that he could gain a better grip on himself and on his past rather then just the drifting of his thoughts.

Colby found no one in the shuttle he knew, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering he didn’t know many people now and hadn’t known many in his youth. Moving out of the shuttle and into the San Francisco air Colby closed his eyes, letting the breeze pass over him and trying to gain a piece of tranquility for his mind.

Colby opened his heavy eyes and looked around at the white sterile smelling hospital room. The last thing he could remember was leaving his car that night. The walking up the steps. His heart pounding. Opening the door. Walking inside. His father towering over his mother was she cried, her arms held protectively over her face.

“So what happened?” Amanda asked, she was sitting in the chair beside his bed, holding his hand.

Colby smiled weakly, “Took the car out for the first time,” Colby lied, “Hit a rough spot in the road,” he shook his head, the lie coming as easily as they always had when he had to explain away black eyes and bruises and cuts. “I don’t think I messed up the car but I hit my head and the steering wheel, didn’t feel anything till I got home and fainted.”

Amanda’s lips pressed together, a single tear falling from down her cheek. She knew he was lying, he was not a good liar and on top of that she had a very high success rate at catching bullshit, especially bullshit thrown her way.

“What’s wrong?” Colby asked, his stomach falling down into the bottomless pit of his gut. Suddenly he wanted to cry but fought off that feeling with every inch of himself.

She tried to smile and shook her head, “I just worry about you,” she lied as she squeezed his hand.

Colby took his Federation Identicard from his pocked and showed it at the main transit hub.

The Bolian behind the counter scanned the card then nodded, “Temporary leave, and where are you headed Ensign Elliot?”

“I need a lift home,” he said flatly, “I need to get back to Nebraska, if its possible I need to get there quickly.”

The Bolian smiled and nodded, “ Want to take advantage of your time off, I understand.” Typing at the compute several departing shuttle times were brought up. “We have shuttles leaving at 15 and 17 hundred hours, we have a rail system leaving at 1530 hours, or I could rent you a vehicle and you could drive there, that might be more fun,” the Bolian smiled.

Colby didn’t smile, in fact it took most of his will power not to pull the smug bastard over the counter and beat the living hell from him. But it wasn’t his fault, he had no idea what was going on. “I’ll take the vehicle, I need time to think,” he shook his head, “I hate those damn shuttles.”

Perhaps sensing his anger or just seeing the dead set of his face the Bolian dropped the cheer and nodded, “Why don’t you head down to the central vehicle lot and pick up a vehicle, enter your car in the vichles reader so the record shows which one you took.” H explained then added, “I’ll do the rest of the work here.”

Colby nodded, “Thank you,” he said and started to walk away then stopped, “Listen,” he said devoid of feeling, as he had said everything else, “I don’t mean to be short with you, I’m here for a funeral, not in the best of moods.”

The Bolian nodded, “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

Colby couldn’t tell if the guy meant it or not but he sounded like he did. “Thank you,” Colby said weakly, “She was my mother.”

"So Saith Scrooge"

Ensign 8-ball Hunter

Jesus Christ, it was Christmas again.

Well, not actually Christmas. Christmas itself wasn't so bad. You got some presents. You got some eggnog. You totally ruined your no carb diet so that you could convienently resolve to do better on New Year's. It wasn't such a bad holiday. But the Christmas SEASON, the few weeks preparing for this not so very special day with carols and cheer and other such general unpleasantries, this was the Hell that was upon 8-ball now.

Off of work now and with relatively nothing to do but pace around her quarters and kick around Eptgac the teddy bear, 8-ball decided to be productive and yet thoroughly unpractical at the very same time by creating a list of exactly why the Christmas season really was the Nightmare Before Christmas.

"Personal logs," 8-ball said as she paced around her quarters and kicked Eptgac around. "I feel it is of vital importance to describe to anybody who comes along in the future and listens to these entries as a way of understanding our civilization today on why it is exactly that the Christmas season really fucking sucks. I'm sure most people in the future are just interested knowing who killed who and why whatever war going on now really got started but I think it's far more important to understand the things that shape our cultural background. To understand a people, you gotta understand things about their everday life, not just important dates and mini-biographies. I mean, I could read a nice little list about all the spiffy accomplishments of Captain Kirk, and how he and his crew saved the universe this time and stopped galatic war that time, but that doesn't mean I know anything about the man. Knowing that Kirk ran around and undiscovered an assassination plot thought up by that way not cool guy General Chang, as well as other nefarious bad-doers, does not actually mean that Kirk was this nice, sweet man. I mean, for all I know, Kirk had a sexual fetish with stuffed penguins. Stranger things have happened."

"Anyway, I'm off point here. All I'm saying is that the Christmas season sucks and that it's important for people to know why it sucks because. . .I say so. So, without further ado, here is the list on why said Christmas seasons just absolutely blows:

1. All the fucking Christmas music. I mean, don't get me wrong, some Christmas songs are great. My Asshole Captain Got Ran Over By a Reindeer is just an absolute classic and my life would surely not be the same thing without it, but most people play that boring crap like "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "Joy to the World", and not only do they play it once, they place it six thousand times, so whenever the song begins to start again, you want to take a phaser, shove it down your throat, and do a few cartwheels so that you can hit the trigger while choking on said phaser and be blown apart into bits from the inside. It's wretched, wretched stuff.

2. All the manic anxiety over how much time you have to get so many presents for so many people and blah blah blah blah. First, there's family and nobody really likes shopping for them because most of the time they're pretty much assholes, but you have to love them and everything and presents are sort of mandatory. Or you get family members who say they don't care whatever you get them, as long as it's from your heart, so you try to get them something suitably saccharine, and then they smile at you while secretly throwing it behind them for the dog to chew. And if family members aren't enough, there are tons of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, coworkers, ex one-night stands, and other such people that you have to at least send a Christmas card to, if nothing else. And then you have to decide if they're probably going to get you something relatively cheap, like a little Federation keychain, or something really expensive, and then have to be able to appropriately reciprocate. And WHEREVER you go in the galaxy, you will be bribed into doing at least one Secret Santa, where you will get the most impossible, least well known person to shop for, and that will just fucking suck too.

3. The joy. Honestly, the joy. Everybody's singing and dancing along like they could just die happy right now and you're sitting there after working a double shift with tribble guts in your hair because of a freak accident and people want to know why you're not in the holiday spirit. God forbid you be in a bad mood at any given time during the Christmas season because then you're not simply in a bad mood, you are Ebe-fucking-nezer Party-Pooper-Scrooge, and you must now sit through people wondering what traumatic thing happened to you at Christmas when you were seven or how they can Tiny Tim you into seeing that to give is truly a better thing than it is to receive. During the Christmas season, it is not allowed to have a crap day and get drunk that night. You must revel in some form of revealing moment and dance around the corridor with some ensign you don't even know because it's Christmas, people, the time of miracles!

4. The music. Sorry to harp on this but seriously. You have Christmas carolers wherever you go and they will not SHUT UP. I swear to God the other day I heard the most awful sounding screech from some terrible little girl singing Christmas carols around the ship. She didn't come to my door and thank God because I might have to strangle her, and that would be bad. Christmas time or no, it is generally unpermissible to murder little children for just being the annoying brats that they are.

5. Last, but not least, the loneliness. No matter what you do, it's always around the Christmas time that you see everybody and their families together, spreading joy and being close and all that other sappy nonsense. Only after awhile it seems less and less like nonsense and more depressing, unbearable truth, especially when you don't even have a pet cat to come home to, just a severely dying teddy bear to take out your Christmas season angst and frustration upon. People look at you like they want to adopt you or ask you straight out why aren't you married with children yet and you want to say, "Kiss my ass, lady, I ain't even 25 yet and that isn't very old," and if they're really annoying, you want to add, "Not ancient like you, you old bag. I can see the gray in your hair and the wrinkles around your mouth. Yeah, you heard me, wrinkles! WRINKLES!!!" You don't say any of this because then you'd probably get the crap kicked out of you by some old bag with wrinkles but you desperately want to do this because it's not fair that you have to be lonely and then chided about it. Really, people just suck. Infact, sometimes there's. . ."

8-ball broke off as her door to her quarters chimed. Praying it wasn't that evil little child she had heard earlier, 8-ball said, "Pause personal log," and went to go answer the door. Standing there was a young man she had seen in ten-forward once or twice. He had on his Starfleet uniform and a Santa hat.

"O Come All Ye Faithful, joyful and triumphant," the guy sang loudly with a big smile on his face. "Come on, spread the Christmas cheer with me!"

8-ball scowled at him and let the door shut in his face. "Okay!" she heard the guy shouting. "Merry fucking Christmas to you too, lady. Or should I call you EBENEZER?"

8-ball took a breath, counted slowly to herself for ten seconds, and then chased after the guy down the corridor with a menacing, over-sized candy cane in hand. Who says she couldn't be in the spirit of things?

"Session three"

Colby Elliot

The car rounded the last corner of the parking garage and moved out into the sun as it left the structure. Pausing at the front section Colby leaned out of the vehicle’s window, sliding his ID card through the scanner, once the information was confirmed by the main computer the gate opened. His eyes looked at the gate and out into the open, down the roads and into the sky as he sat in the car just inside the gateway structure. “Well get going,” Colby said to himself. He waited one more moment then moved the car out.

Ahead of him the road seemed like symbolism and had he been in any other kind of mindset, had anything else brought him here, he would have found the long barren stretch of nothing kind of funny. Like when the director makes it rain on the actor just after their heart is broken, make the lonely man walked down the long boulevard broken dreams.

Colby’s father a big shiteating grin plastered all over his face when he walked into the room holding the torn envelope. He walked in and while Colby had grown to be taller then his father his father still seemed taller, bigger and stronger then Colby could ever grow to be himself. He cocked his head to the side, “You know what this is, boy?”

Colby shook his head, he had no idea what it was but he hoped like hell it wasn’t a warrant earning him a beating from his father. The smile promised it wasn’t but father smiled all the time, it didn’t mean anything. Fair play was to let it mean something but fair play was for fair men, beating women and children was for cheaters.

“All silent,” father said, that same damn smile and head cocked to the side. “I got it while you were in the hospital for banging your head.” His father shook his head and deviated, “Jesus boy you need to learn how to drive that car.”

Colby wanted to ask what the letter was and had his father not been his father or had been any other kid of father he would have but asking a questions like that would cut off the old man’s story and cutting off the old man equaled out to feeling the back of his hand on your face. Colby said quietly at his desk, his half finished math homework pushed to one side and his attention straining to stay on father.

“It’s a scholarship,” he said, the grin growing larger. To anyone else it just looked like a man smiling but to Colby and probably Colby’s mother, it looked like a tiger bearing its first row of razor fangs and Colby had to fight not to flinch back in his chair. “You got in to college for your football,” he said grinning, “You didn’t get your old man’s knees.”

Colby smiled suddenly everything was gone, everything that was wrong and terrible in the world was gone because he was going away to college and he’d never have to come back here again.

“You finally did something right,” his father said.

Colby smiled, “Thanks,” His dad could say anything and it wouldn’t get him down, he was leaving this hell hole forever, there was no looking back now.

“I’ll tell your mother,” father said before disappearing out of the room.

Colby stopped. Stopped breathing, stopped being happy about breathing, stopped thinking, stopped everything. He just sat there as his brain fired only one message through. Mom. Colby grabbed the sides of his desk, trying to will himself to think, to breath, to get his legs to move but he couldn’t. After an eternity of nothing Colby gasped and fell forward, his head landing on his desk, he could feel himself gasping, feel his body hitching and felt the tears running down his face but was powerless to do anything about it then let it happen. He would leave here and if he did he would leave her behind, leave her with him.

Colby bit his bottom lip in an attempt to keep things in their proper place as he veered the car into the side lane but he knew he didn’t have long. Taking the ramp down he put the car in park and nearly dove out of the vehicle, moving swiftly out the door and doubling over on the pavement and vomiting on the cold concrete below. Three more seconds and he could have made it to the bathroom but he knew he couldn’t and the ground in front of him was better then the car and better then doing it while trying to sprint to the lavatory.

Looking down at his hot mess Colby felt like puking again but fought it off and moved to the side before dropping to the ground and rolling a safe distance from the vom. Laying on his back Colby looked at the sky above him, the clouds moving slowly and lazily moved across the expanse of blue sky. For a while he just lay there, looking up at the sky like a kid trying to pick out what the clouds looked like, what shapes and animals they formed with their white fluffy mass. As he watched the heavens above his lower lip began to quiver slightly then he grimaced and closed his eyes as tears began to flow, his hands moved to cover his eyes as the few tears gave way to sobbing.

When he finally got up Colby wasn’t sure just how long he had lay there crying but the sun had set and the orange light that came from the horizon was beginning to fade, soon it would be replaced by the dark night’s sky. Rubbing his face Colby sat upright and looked around and stretched his arms before standing up. Colby sighed as he brushed the grass from his clothes before moving back toward the car. Swinging the door open he sat down and pulled his seat belt on. Wiping his eyes Colby keyed the ignition.

The dim lights sent out long beams in the dusty room and cast long misshapen shadows on the dirt floor and on the walls. Colby sat onto of one of several hay bails in the barn, he sat flicking his fingernails with a small blade, scraping the dirt and grit out from under them. His movements were slow and while the act was cumbersome and seen as uncivilized he did it was a strange kind of grace and care. The grace and care of a man who has done this a million times before and did it now like a machine programmed to do so.

Figured appeared by the door, his tall frame bending down to step inside the door, the low light glinting of his bald dark head. “Nice barn,” he said in a mocking tone as he looked around. He did it slowly and arrogantly as a man would sum up a car he felt was beneath him or look down from his penthouse windows to the homeless shambling below.

“It’s my uncles farm,” Colby said dropping down from the hay to the floor, small whiffs of dust kicking up as his size twelves touched down. Colby looked up to face the bald man; he wore his college jacket, a white football sewn into the left sleeve. “He’s back in Lincoln for some party, no one will see us out here.”

The man smiled the smile of someone who thinks they know everything, every angle and every move. Reaching into his pocket he withdrew a card and handed it to Colby. “There’s ten thousand on that,” the dark man said then smiled, “We got a deal I say.”

Colby nodded, “We’ve got a deal.”

After the rest stop, Colby’s time on his back and his bought of sudden sickness, he got back on the road and drove on. Doing what normal people would, driving for hours, stopping for greasy fast food and sleeping in motels as he made the trek from San Francisco to Nebraska.

The world passed around his windows as he drove and while he did what normal people did on roads trips he didn’t feel like a real person. Eating when he got hungry, sleeping when he was worn down, but it all felt automatic. Gather one, gather all, look at the world’s one and only living machine, he looks like us, eats like us and even gets tired and goes to the bathroom but its all automatic, like a train on a track he doesn’t go anywhere we don’t let him.

As the countryside opened around the small vehicle that carried Colby nearer and nearer to home his mind wondered. Not that there was anything new there, ever since that message had arrived it had been nearly impossible to keep his mind on the here and now, it drifted in and out, moving to the past then to the present before drifting back to the days of his youth. The days when, foolishly, he thought he could fix everything, protect the ones he loved and grow to be the man he wanted to be. That had changed too, the man he wanted to be then was not the man who he wanted to be now, he was what he wanted to be now and until this moment had been content with that. But what had changed that? Had this changed it, had his father changed that? At what point did he shed the old image of what he should be for the new one? Colby shook his head, that didn’t really matter, what was done was done and the reason he picked this man, the man he was, over the man he was working for in his youth didn’t matter. It was over and while there were things he would change, would give anything to change, he would not want to become someone else.

Colby smirked, so glad I cleared that up, he said to himself, his mental tone even sounded tired. “Fuck.” Colby grunted through clenched teeth as he slammed on the brakes.

The road the car had been driving down was a long curve laden stretch of two lane road. Beyond the road large pines towered on each side and all was silent until the screeching sound of tires rang out, the car breaking and veering to the side.

Elliot opened the door and was out of the car in an instant and a moment after that he was standing in the middle of the street, “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice wavering slightly.

The woman turned to Colby and smiled, “I’m fine,” she said gathering up her few bags, “Hey, since you’ve stopped could you give me a ride?” She was dressed in an oversized sweater, a dress and large black hiking boots her hair was slightly frayed and tied back in a pony tail.

To Colby she looked a bit like a hippie and really for all he knew she was, she also looked like a girl who couldn’t have been over eighteen in the middle of nowhere. “Why the hell were you standing in the middle of the street?” Colby asked, put off by the fact that he was concerned about nearly hitting the girl but she didn’t seem to have a care about being the nearly hit.

She laughed as she walked towards his car, “in this area if you just stand at the side of the road people think you’re a tree,” she said then added, “or they just don’t stop.”

Colby shook his head, “What if I didn’t stop?”

She smiled and shook her head, “We don’t need to worry about that do we? Now can you give me a ride or not?”

Colby sighed, the breath moving slowly from him, his eyes closing while he did so, he was trying to focus on the here and now, fighting off the urge to fall back into the past. “Where are you going?”

“This town in Nebraska,” she said with a smirk, “wide spot in the highway, wide spot in the highway.” Taking another look at Colby’s car she shifted her gaze to him once more, “where are you going?”

“Lincoln,” Colby said as he walked to the car and pulled the key out of the iginigtion and moved around to the back of the car and opened the rear hatch, “you can put your stuff in here,” he offered.

“Thanks,” she said, a victorious little grin on here face.

“So where’d you get this ride?” were the first words out of her mouth after Colby got back on the road and back on his way home. She was looking around the car like a curious kid looks around the toy isle, not sure if they want to start playing with the toys or asking mommy and daddy to buy them first.

“Work,” Colby said, trying to focus on the road and where he was going though he wasn’t sure why, getting distracted by someone would probably do him a lot of good at this point but he still tried to stay focused.

She nodded, “My name is Kari,” she said, “what’s yours?”

Colby shrugged, “Does it really matter?” he asked, his tone never leaving the vacant spectrum it had taken on two days ago when he had gotten the message. After saying that he looked over to her and could tell by her expression that for her it did matter what his name was and he wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. “Colby.”

Kari giggled, “Like the cheese.”

Colby nodded, “Like the Cheese.”

“Like the cheese?” Amanda asked, one eyebrow raised doubtfully, “You’re named after cheese?”

Colby smiled as he looked down into her eyes, “What can I say, my parents were bastards.” He walked down the corridor beside her, around them people moved to their lockers and to their next classes but at this moment, for Colby anyway, there was no one else in the hall, “So how about it? You wanna see a movie or something?”

She smiled and Colby knew looking at her she couldn’t possibly know how perfect she looked when she smiled, “I don’t know,” she said in a soft tone, “I’ve never gone out with cheese before.”

Colby laughed, “Please?” he asked softly, slightly leaning toward her but not so much that it would have been overly noticeable.

With a smile she took out a small piece of paper and wrote her number down on it, holding it toward Colby….

“Ow, shit.” Colby said turning to face Kari, “What was that for?” He asked quizzically, feeling like he had just been jerked from a nap.

“Where did you go?” she asked in a jovial tone, her head shaking in mock disapproval, “you’re like a robot, I was trying to talk to you but you just kept driving, I thought you might have been asleep but you made all the turns.”

Colby looked around, “Lucky we didn’t end up in a ditch.” The big man said with a sigh then, knowing she wouldn’t let him leave it at that, “There’s just a lot on my mind.”

“You wanna talked about it?” she asked, for the first time not sounding like a kid.

She had an air of experience around her, and it was more then the hitch-hiking. She just seemed like she had been around, seen a lot, done a lot, that was, she seemed like that when not acting like a thirteen year old. Colby wondered if that might not be a defense, not against people like him, people who picked her up, but against the world around her. He imagined it would have been lonely as hell walking down a wooded section of land with nothing to keep you company but your thumb out, hoping for someone like him to come pick you up.

“What are you doing out in the middle of nowhere?” Colby asked, pushing her question to the side not because he didn’t want to answer it but because his thought had simply shifted from himself to her. “Couldn’t you have gotten a bus ride or a shuttle?”

Her eyes lost a bit of their lusted when he asked that question and they moved from his to the floor of the vehicle. “I have just had a few bad experiences on trips like that, huddled with two dozen strangers in some stinking bus for hours.” She tried for a smile but Colby could tell it was a fake, “besides, out here I am part of nature, part of the world, you can’t see the sky on a bus, can’t be anything but a passenger on a shuttle, I’m part of everything here.”

Colby wished he hadn’t asked; the look in her eyes and the weak story about nature told him that perhaps she was like him, wounded and traveling though in her case it wasn’t back, it was away from the wounds. While seeing someone in the same boat as he was in might have normally made him feel a little better about his situation now it made him feel worse. “How about we listen to a little music?” Colby asked, suddenly feeling lonely and low as hell.

Smiling she nodded, some of her girlish glee coming back to her, “yeah, that’s great.”

Colby switched on the radio, looking at her for a second as he did before turning back to the road, “you can listen to whatever you want.” He said as he watched the road unfold in front of him. Colby wished he could lose his gloom as easy as she seemed able to but he guessed that was pretty moot. Colby drove on and as he did a thought wormed its way into his mind, this time not thoughts of the past but a thought about the future. What would he do once he got there and if he did what he expected he would do what would there be to do after that? How would he pick up the pieces of his life? Would he, or would he just roam the country side hitch-hiking, trying to forget about it? Yeah Colby, you didn’t think about that with all your flashbacks, what are you going to do with the after, not the before?

"Red Herring"

Ensign Naranda Sol Roswell,
Engineer

Ensign Saul Bental,
Intelligence Officer

Nara wasn't sure why she decided to visit Saul. She just knew she had time, and she wanted to see what he was up to. She hit the door chime and suddenly wondered if he was even there at all.

The door sled open. Saul's room seemed empty, yet someone had to open the door, it couldn't just open up all by itself now could it?

Nara looked around wearily staying near the door to keep it from shutting. The room had no personal touch at all. She wondered if she even had the right quarters. She was had turned to leave, but suddenly...

"Princess!" she heard a a pair of feet land on the floor, behind her. She spun around before realizing what happened, her soldier's reflexes leading her. In front of her stood Saul Bental, wearing short-sleeved sports shirt and shorts. He was sweating, and smiling.

Nara scowled at him, "I could have killed you with one hit!"

"Probably. I'm experimenting in some new form of gymnastics. It supposes to give maximum improvement in minimum time, and you're basically hung from the ceiling." He explained, pointing upwards. Nara looked up, and saw a strange device attached to the room's ceiling. If it could be used for physical exercise, the way you use it was beyond her comprehension.

She gave him a strange look. "The more I get to know you Mr. Saul Bental, the stranger you are to me." She looked up again at the curious device, "Is that the only thing that decorates this place?"

"That? It's only temporal. I read about it in some anthropology report and just had to try it. It's Deltan. Computer, lights up, twenty percent."

The lights in the room became slightly brighter, although it remained somewhat shadowy and far less brighter than the illumination in the corridors outside.

"As for my room, well, that's just how I'm used to live. In a year, two, maybe more, I'll have to abandon this room as well, what's the point of filling it with... stuff?"

"A year is a long time, Saul." She smiled at him, "But it's your quarters. I can't tell you what to do with it. I didn't come to trash your quarters. I was just. I had some free time, and you're one of the few people I know personally."

Saul beamed at her. "Well, I don't get many visitors, and the last engineer who came into my quarters turned it into a freezing hell that would make a Breen shiver. I'm glad that you came. And hey, if you have any idea for decoration, go ahead. I just don't pay much attention to my quarters."

Nara smiled at him. She briefly wondered who could had possibly had messed up the controls. "I promise not to touch the environmental controls." She crossed her arms, "So is that what you do in your free time? Hang from the ceilings like a bat?"

"Oh, no no no, it's just a one-time thing!" Saul trued to defend himsef. "My uncle Dorian always said that you had to try anything once, except for sexual intercourse where you shouldn't limit yourself... it sound better in Dutch."

Nara looked at him and gave him a look, "Ok then." She glanced around again, "You speak Dutch?"

"Well... yes... my family comes from the Netherlands, originally, although for the past couple of centuries they've been roaming space instead of fishing Herring..."

"So they've decided to stick with the issue then?" She smiled at him.

"What? Oh, gotcha." The Intelligence officer smiled sheepishly, a bead of sweat dropping from his forehead towards the floor. "At any rate, we're a proud line of, umm, merchants, and I'm no different - if you recall the commodities I purchased on Sakaria."

Saul eyed Nara intensly. The girl simply waltzed into the lion's den. It was now only him, her, and the darkness. She was a proficient warrior, but even the most seasoned veterarn won't survive and Ion pulse pistol's ray. Flesh was just flesh. A single squeeze of the trigger, and a fair amount of credits would find its way to his pockets, and more important - a giant step toward fullfilling his agenda. And yet...

She didn't know. She couldn't know. Who would be insane enough to pay a visit to someone who was hired to kill her?

Nara turned and looked at Saul. She looked at him with concern, "Are you alright?" Something was going on with him. She crossed her arms, "Something is on your mind. One minute, you're normal. Weird, but normal. The next you look like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders." It almost seemed as if he had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. She wasn't sure what the conflict in his head was. She smiled and put a hand on his shoulder, "Always listen to the angel. The devil just gets you in trouble."

"In a way, I do." he said, gently placing his hand on her shoulder as he passed by her and headed for the replicator. "I'm making the both of us Tea unless you have any objections. You must know the feeling, having the life of people in your hands, being an Engineer and all."

Nara nodded at the comment of tea. "And a warrior." She watched him a moment. He was an Intel officer. For all obvious reasons, anyone outside that circle was never quite sure what these people dealt with.

Saul continued, "Speaking of which, I overheard that there's a lady from the Engineering corps giving you hell down in main engineering. How're you handling it?"

Nara smiled. "It's not all bad. Just annoying being watched." She watched him a moment and went back to the subject. Talk about Red Herrings. "If I may ask, what's going on?" Suddenly Nara was worried. Was there more to this mission than they were told?

"That's on a need to know basis." Saul smirked, but inside he was getting concerned. Did she already know, and was trying to give him a chance to tell her? If that's the case, and if he'll continue to pretend that everything is all right, she might decide that he is a threat.

Soldiers eliminate threats. That's how they deal with them.

"To be honest." He added, trying to avoid such an option, "I have some problems, but I'm not the kind of person who shares. Trust me to be mature and strong enough to handle it myself, and I assure you - you won't be disappointed. And... thanks for the concern."

Nara frowned. "I can't say I'm not the same way." She looked at him, "But if there was anyone I'd be willing to share with, you'd be it." She remembered K'Erin, "I hadn't felt like I could really befriend someone since before the Academy." She looked down. Starfleet officers in general were hard to get to. Especially Intel officers. She shrugged and looked up again, "I guess with some people it just takes time. Erin and I were about 10 I guess, and at that age you open up quickly and have less secrets. From then, we just grew up together." She smiled, "Just remember, if you need me, I'm here."

"I'll keep that in mind..." Saul said. It was like she was slowly approaching him and trying to convince him to put down a loaded phaser. Gently. Soothingly. "And you too, I mean, if there's anything you want to share, as you said - I'm a good listener. Eavesdropper."

Nara smiled at him. She sighed, "So since talking isn't part of our agenda, what would you like to do? Or are you busy?" She nodded up at the gymnist device.

Saul glanced at his bed. A handful of ideas, very different from each other, crossed his mind. "There are several Terran solutions for a situation where two people want to spend time together, but aren't in the mood of talking. The solution of my choice would be a five-centuries old concept called 'A movie'. Ingredients - one Holo projector, one or more people as an audience, and preferrably a bowl of something I'd like to think of as 'Popcorn'. Movie selection is left for the ladies, of course."

Nara smiled. "Which ones can I choose from?"

Saul chuckled, and activated the holoprojector, letting her browse the ship's collection. A few clicks and a brief dialouge with the replicator, and they were all set. The illumination was already dark, so they didn't have to dim the light. Saul sat on the sofa - the only piece of furniture in the room other than the bed and the desk - and invited Nara to join him.

Nara had chose a movie called, "Point of No Return." It had first been seen in the 1990s. It was a movie about a woman who was given the choice of extermination or helping the government by becoming an assassin.

"Antique!" Saul commented before they dimmed the lights. As the movie began, he was overwhelmed by two things.

The first was the subject of the movie. He wasn't familiar with it, but it didn't take him long before he realized what it was about. The main character was given a grim choice, but could still be redeemed. She wasn't a bad person, and becoming an assassin was forced on her.

She would probably somehow get a way out, Saul guessed. Is that why Nara chose the movie? Is she trying to tell me that I have a way out? Does she know?

No, if she would've known, she would probably chop his head off by now, shouting a Sakarian battle cry while she's at it.

The second thing to overwhelm him was her. Her clean scent, the warmth her body radiated - warmth one could feel by being near someone, but not touching. Her curls landed on her shoulders, forming an exotic frame to a face where two big eyes focused on the projection intensly.

Saul decided that it's better to be distracted by her presence than by thoughts that could give away his secret contract, and did his best to focus on the movie - which was, all in all, not that bad for an antique.

NRPG/OOC : Glad to be back :) If anyone wants to JP, I'm here.

"The Return of Jamson"
By
Lieutenant Michael Jamson,
Operations Officer

Faces, so many faces...treacherous faces, cowards' faces, and the brave ones, with no face. Moving through space and time, all of those faces, wearing Starfleet uniforms, Klingon ceremonial war costumes and cybernetic implants, converged into a single point of annoyance and disturbance in one's mind."You are suspended" a tall admiral said, "You will never command a starship again!" another one added. "You are a failure..." a familiar old man closed his eyes, "A Ferengi dog!!!" someone cried in klingon. Faces kept coming back and forth, not letting go...reminding of past incidents, binding the soul to eternal suffering.

Out of nowhere, the klaxons yelled with simultaneous red warning lights as the ship tried to keep itself together, "Shields down to 17%!!!" a young lieutenant yelled. "Captain, hull breaches on decks 11 and 19!!!". The old tough ship continued in it's course, knowing it was heading towards it's doom. "Helm, hold it steady! we will not alter course!!!!", the commanding officer shouted. "Sir...at this rate, we would not be----" A huge explosion tore the entire port section of the bridge, of the aging Excelsior class starship, sending the entire ops section along with it's officers to the vacuum of space. "Containment fields!!!!" the executive officer tried to hang on at the helm station. Within seconds, the computer deployed the fields leaving the stunned crew with a remarkable open view of space. A known recognizable horrific voice echoed through the ships' halls as the vessel was being pulled by a glowing green tractor beam "Resistance is futile....".

Darkness, a complete blackout. A small chime is heard in a distance, fading in and out. The same old feeling of cold metal pressed against the skin, "~~~~~~~~", the chime continued to fade in, this time, louder. "~~~~~~~~~!!!!!" It was getting more clear than before, an almost unbearable sound. Like a sharp pain, piercing your mind. "Heeeee!" Jamson woke up in an instant, sweating like a frightened Acamarian cralluck on the open desert plains of Acamar III. His personal desktop beeping from the other side of the room. "Bloody computer...." he whispered angrily, grabbing a near flowerpot of Lyaaran flowers and throwing it onto his personal computer. "Great..." He looked at the broken vase. These were rare Lyaaran red flowers, carnations like, which were brought to near extinct on Lyaar. Lyaarans, for centuries, have selectively removed 'harmful' fauna and flora unnecessary and useless on their homeworld. He would have to spend a considerable amount of time in the ship's arboretum, and the last time he checked, the Galaxy didn't have an arboretum. It used to have one, but it was converted into a science lab after the last refit. He would have to speak to someone about this. He's been often mocked when seen in the arboretum, people never understood why a klingon wannabe had to occupy himself with plants. It was just a way of relaxing, nothing more.

Leaving his quarters after tiding up, Jamson thought of his latest dream. He's been having it for the past several years, and none of the counselors could have helped him. He hoped his old adversary, Karyn Dallas, would be of assistance. As much as hated admitting it, he missed her and the ship. "Resistance is futile..." he reminded himself. [Flashback] The gigantic borg cube approached the drifting Ranger and grabbed it with it's tractor beams. No one who survived on the bridge spoke out, they were all watching the cube through the hull tear of the bridge. It was quite clear, that the end was near. Michael jumped from his captain's chair, pulled out a D'kTahg and grasped a phaser. "We will fight to the death..." he clenched his teeth. Soon afterwards the crew was making preparations for the upcoming invasion, handing out phasers and compression rifles. This was a no win situation, but Jamson would never give up, he would die like a true warrior. He would taste the blood of his enemies and watch them fall one by one. It wasn't long before the first borg party stormed the bridge, and have adapted rather quickly to the phaser shots. An I-Mod back than, would have been useful, but that was before Voyager returned from the Delta quadrant. Soon enough, it was hand to hand combat against the machines who kept swarming the ship like Minosian ants. Minutes that seemed like hours passed as the crew faced impossible odds. Without any hope, they fought like true Klingon warriors - to the death. And just when Jamson thought it was all over, the ship was suddenly released from the holding grip of the cube. It was the rest of the fleet, coming to their aid.

Months later, after extensive rehabilitation, the proud captain found himself with no ship to command. They didn't take his command pips, but they made sure he wouldn't command a starship again. They took his beloved Ranger. Starfleet imbeciles, officials rotting at their desks, politicians bickering on policies when brave men and women die at the front. He never could tolerate them. That was one of the reasons he was now a mere lieutenant now, a soft point.

'Enough...' he said to himself. He's been tormenting himself like that for years, it's been some sort of obsession recipe for personal suffering. An odd decoration caught his eye, it was a Christmas ornament. "Christmas?" he frowned. He forgot all about it! he never liked holidays anyhow, and the last time he spent Christmas on the Galaxy, he ended up with a broken leg. Ski practice at the holodeck...that was years ago. How could his miss the cheerful atmosphere of crew? it's only been a couple of days since he boarded the ship. Michael picked up a Santa's hat that was rolling on the floor. Crew members passed by, striding through the corridors, smiling and nodding to each other. You'll never catch Michael wearing on of these, not to mention smiling. He growled and tossed the hat away, he wondered of the ops department and his new commanding officer. He was scheduled a meeting, actually several of them, in a couple of hours, but his shift started in a matter of minutes. He had to visit Karyn, Sickbay, and his commanding officer. Being able to work would prove to be a challenge, especially in the condition the ship's in, and Michael wasn't referring to the technical condition of the ship after the refit, but to the state of mind of the crew.

1997