Austin Grayson; NCC-1701--The Baton
AUSTIN GRAYSON
NCC-1701
#03
The Baton
Featuring
Austin Grayson
Jennifer Grayson
Mark Grayson
Hank Morton
Reymia Diaz
Doctor Inglehopper
Leonard Jackson
Rayana Jackson
Kenneth Hines
Guest Starring
Saxon
USS ENTERPRISE
The starship Enterprise was in
orbit of Earth. Austin Grayson was slowly accepting his role as Captain. He was still uneasy about it, but he wanted to honor his dad’s wishes as best as he could.
Even Austin’s uncle, Mark, had come around to accepting Austin as the new Captain, having at first thought it should have been him. And with nearly a month passed since that day, when they lost not only Austin’s father
Frank, but also
Mike Kubicki, things were starting to return back to Normal; well, normal as having a real starship Enterprise above Earth, in high orbit, could be.
Austin sat at the head of the Briefing Room table. Arrayed around the table were, on his right, the ship’s XO, Mark. To Mark’s right were Leonard Jackson, ship’s Operations specialist. To Leonard’s right sat Kenneth Hines. Kenneth had been second in line in Security, and Helm operations, at the time of Kubicki’s death. Kenneth was actually one of Leonard’s friends from the military, who had come up to the ship at the request of Leonard when the crew was been assembled months ago, and he as also African American. Austin remembered his father being uneasy with the amount of former military people aboard. But it was something he came to accept, as did Austin.
To Austin’s left were Hank Morton, third in command and head of Engineering, then to his left were ship’s counselor Reymia Diaz, Communication’s director Rayana Jackson, and science officer Mister Tashigawa. Sitting at the far end of the table was Doctor Inglehopper.
“Could you repeat what you just said, just to make sure I heard we all heard you correctly?” Doctor Inglehopper asked.
And from what Austin could tell, the others had the same question as well.
“Well,” Austin told them all, “I don’t think this ship is supposed to just sit up here and go around and around the planet. Now, according to Mister Morton,”
“Call me Hank, Son,” Morton interjected.
Austin shook his head. “I can’t sir; you’re a retired Air Force General. I know you keep asking me to call you Hank, but if my dad couldn’t bring him self to do it, then neither can I.” Austin said to him. Morton nodded in acceptance. “Anyway,” Austin continued, “according to Mister Morton, thanks to Mike Kubicki, we have enough Dilithium to power the ship for nearly four months. And thanks to the training material aboard the ship, the engineering maintenance crews are learning to do the small tasks that will help keep this ship,” Austin paused, “afloat. Meanwhile, the rest of us are just, well, doing nothing.”
Then Doctor Inglehopper spoke. “Excuse me Austin, but what else can we do? We’re not part of Starfleet, there is no Starfleet. There are no other Federation planets out there we can journey to because there are no real Federation planets. In fact, with all due respect for your father, sometimes I wonder what the whole purpose was in convincing of us to come up here.”
Austin shook his head.
“No, Mister Inglehopper,” Austin said quickly, “it was no mystery as to why you, or Mr. Tashigawa, or Ms. Diaz and everyone else came up here. It was to be apart of this ship, and all of us knew what that meant; the exploration of space. I mean, I don’t even watch the show that much, but wasn’t that in the opening of every show?” Austin asked Inglehopper, but in essence, all of them at the table. “Doesn’t it say
to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations? To boldly go where no man,”
“Or woman.” Rayana added quickly.
Austin nodded, “where no one,” he corrected himself, “has gone before.”
“So are you saying you want us to leave Earth and explore the universe?” Mark asked. “I’m not even sure Frank wanted to do that. I mean, what would happen to us if the ship had some kind of problem. They had starbases on that show, scattered through out space that they could go to for repair. Not us. So, I am not really sure that Frank would have wanted to explore the universe.”
Austin nodded in agreement. “Oh, I know my father did. Maybe not the vast distances they traveled on Star Trek. But, I was up here on this ship for nearly three months with him. In fact, for the first month, it was pretty much just him, my mom and sister, and me. And he would talk about trying to find alien worlds and make peaceful contact with them. Me? I would talk about saving the world, and the Ozone layer, and he’d kind of smile and say, okay. But he wanted to leave Earth, come back now and then, but he wanted to leave and find what was out there in space.”
“But he isn’t in command any more,” Morton spoke plainly. “You are.”
Austin nodded. “I know. So, I want to do both.” Austin said. “With the technology aboard this ship, there must be something we can do about the Ozone layer, maybe even Global Warming.”
“I talked with your father as well, Austin.” Reymia said. “He was also worried about stagnating Earth’s development by interfering with the natural progression of humanity. If you help the world cut corners you might help in the short run, but in the long run, you might do our social fabric more harm.”
“But we don’t know that.” Rayana said to her. “Just think what this ship’s technology could do to help with the fight against world hunger, and poverty.” Then she looked back to Austin. “There has to be a fine balance between exploring space for new worlds, and helping our own world.”
Austin nodded in agreement. Then he looked around the table at his senior staff. “What is the status of the ship?”
Inglehopper spoke first. “Well, we now have 247 people aboard the ship thanks to the birth of Mr. and Mrs. Jennings’ child yesterday. She is one of my lead nurses, and I am proud to say they have a new healthy little boy.”
“Wow, that is so incredible.” Leonard said as the others applauded. “What did they name him?”
Inglehopper smiled. “They named him Francis.”
Austin nodded. “My dad would have been very humbled after knowing a new baby was named after him.”
“Maybe they named him after Frank Sinatra.” Morton added with a chuckle.
The others chuckled with him.
Reymia, who was the ship’s counselor, was glad to see a small crack of humor about Frank had finally shown up. It showed that the crew was moving on, but still respected what had come before.
Suddenly a call came down from the Bridge. Mark flipped a switch on the table’s consol.
“Go ahead.” Mark said.
The voice of the on duty communications person was heard on the other end. “We are getting a signal from Earth. It is coming from a man named Saxon. He wants to speak to Captain Grayson.”
“It has to be Narrenson, or someone who works for him.” Morton said.
“Good,” Austin said, “I want to see that man, or men, who killed my father.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Reymia asked.
Austin nodded. “Someone told me a while back that it was time to become the Captain of this vessel.” Austin said. “I’d rather be puffing on a joint, or playing Call of Duty, but I can’t do that anymore; at least not now. The rest of you can go ahead and be excused. I will take this message alone.”
“Sure you don’t want me or Hank to be here with you?” Mark asked.
Austin nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure I can handle this.”
Austin watched as the rest of his staff filed out of the briefing room. He engaged the screen in the middle of the table.
The image of a man came on the screen. “Thank you for speaking with me.” The stranger said.
“Are you responsible for my father’s murder?” Austin asked directly.
The man nodded. “My name is Saxon, and yes, I would be lying if I said otherwise. But please hear me out.”
Austin had an innate ability for reading people’s faces, so did his dad. “You have two minutes Mr. Saxon.”
“So I assume you are in command? What happened to your uncle? It had been assumed he would have taken over for him.” Saxon asked.
“Well,” Austin said, “I am in command. And that is all you need to know about what is going up here.”
Saxon nodded. “I see your point. And in a strange way its probably better I do speak with you. But rather than speak to you like this, through the coldness of a TV signal, I would rather have you come down here. I know you have no reason to trust me. But what I have to tell you, and show you, will not only shed light on to what my predecessor, the late Mister Narrenson was doing, but it will also answer many questions about your ship.” Saxon said.
“What do you mean?” Austin asked.
“I have sent your ship the coordinates to my position. You can have your sensors scan this building as much as you like. When you do, you will detect a strange energy reading. It is coming from a device deep beneath where I am standing. But due to security reasons I would much rather tell you the rest in person.”
Austin thought for a moment. “Let me consider your offer, Mr. Saxon.” Austin said. “I will contact you with in the hour.”
--
Moments later Austin was up on the bridge standing near the science station. Mark and Hank were with him, and they spoke as Tashigawa studied the readings coming from the building Saxon stood by. It was building in the outskirts of Pittsburg.
“You can’t possibly be considering going down there to meet that man.” Mark said to Austin. “They killed Frank and will most surely kill you.”
Morton nodded in agreement. “I agree with the XO. I have watched every episode of every Star Trek. This definitely is too much of a risk. If it were Captain Kirk he would not go down there, in a situation like this.” Morton said with the best poker face he had.
Austin shook his head. “Nice try, Mister Morton.” Austin said. “But we both know that he would have already beamed down. At least I’m letting Mister Tashigawa assess the situation first.”
Tashigawa stood up. Before he spoke Leonard Jackson spoke from the Navigation station.
“Mister Tashigawa, the solar probe is sending back the new batch of readings.” Jackson said.
“A Solar probe? What Solar Probe.” Austin asked.
Mark spoke. “Your father approved Mr. Tashigawa’s request to launch a
solar probe sometime back. It was one of the other joint operations we did with NASA, along with giving the Voyager probe a tune-up.”
“Oh, cool.” Austin said. He turned to face Tashigawa. “What did you find?”
“I would say Mr. Saxon is telling the truth.” Tashigawa said with a slight Japanese accent. “The building he is standing next to is emitting a strange energy signature that the ship’s sensors can not identify. He is unarmed, and from what I can tell, there is no real threat.”
“Even still,” Mark added quickly, “you can’t go down there Austin.”
Austin put his hands on his uncle’s shoulder. “Something inside me is telling me I can trust this man. We could go down there, firing phasers, in retribution for my father’s death. Or we can find out what this man has to say, and then blow them up with Photon Torpedoes. But, for right now, I think this is something I need to do.”
“Then I demand you take a phaser at least.” Morton said.
Austin shook his head in disagreement. “No, I don’t want to risk them getting their hand on a phaser just incase it is a trap.”
--
Moments later Austin, his mother Jennifer, his uncle Mark, and Hank Morton stood in Transporter Room. Austin stepped up to the Transporter Pad.
“You better come back!” Jennifer said, with the sound of concern in her voice.
“I will mom.” Austin said sheepishly.
“Oh, and tell Mr. Saxon,” Mark said, “that if you don’t come back, or they hurt you? I will take command of this vessel, and I will use every ounce of power it has to destroy the United States of America.”
Hank Morton was about to beam Austin down when he said, “I’m with your uncle on this one.” Hank said, chomping on a cigar. “If they so much as harm one hair on your body I will personally see to it that ‘dubbaya’ is hanging by his scrotum before this day is out!”
They all laughed at that.
And in an instant, Hank Morton beamed Austin Grayson down to Earth.
--
Austin shimmered into view, right next to where Saxon was standing.
“Damn that looks so cool. Does it make you sick?” Saxon said with a smile.
“The first couple times it does.” Austin said. “But you get used to it.”
“I see.” Saxon said. “First, let’s go down..”
Austin interrupted him. “First, let me say this. I must warn you that if any thing happens to me while I am down here, my uncle will take command of the ship and declare war on the United States of America. Trust me; he means it. I won’t even tell you what might happen to the President.”
Saxon smiled. “Too bad, I’d like to hear that one.” Saxon said. “Let’s get this started. I have a feeling after you hear what I say you will agree with me.”
“Agree with you about what?” Austin asked.
“Oh, nothing special,” Saxon said, “only the beginning of a new era for our world. And, hopefully, it will be a peaceful one.”
They shook hands, and Austin followed Saxon into the nondescript
brick and steel building. They would soon make their way down to the lowest level of the building, and even then, a little lower.
Saxon would take Austin into the bowels of the complex that sifted through the information, with out a single word being discussed between the workers. From there Austin would be taken into a most secret room. And then, Austin Grayson would come face to face with;
The Server. And, more importantly; the creator of the USS ENTERPRISE.
(
NOTE FROM ROB SCORPIO A brief word about the SERVER. The Server is a large device, kind of like what is pictured if you click on the link. It is supposed to be the size of a man. But so far I have yet to find a graphic that really fits my vision. So this one will have to do. Just imagine it is the size of a man.)
CONTINUED
