Deeper into the Final Frontier

[Will The Serious]

This is the opening and prompt to what I hope becomes a continuing project for any of us who wish to add their own little twist or action to the story. I thought a community story would be great fun. Time jumps, alternate universe, crossovers, it's all good. There is no overall plot.

I'll be happy to add a table of contents to the top, so anyone reading the story can jump to whichever part they want to read. Just put a link at the bottom of your posts to return back to this first post.

I'll try to add the main characters to the top, so everyone can keep track of them. I'll include a link to the post where they were first introduced, too.

The ship: USS Doohan, a Hoover class starship

Characters {The character names are linked to the post where they were first introduced}:

Captain Caspian (Casper/ the Friendly Ghost) Williams. Human male, excels at sneaky space battle tactics and believes combat is a last resort.

T'Nilz. Klingon female, reconnaissance, excels at sneaky urban battlefield tactics.

Hecatellia. Her body was lost, so her sanity. Her consciousness wove in repeated patterns among and through the distorted stars of the Typhon Expanse. Patterns she had created millennia ago in an attempt to escape her prison. She had long forgotten that purpose and she wove herself through her patterns out of habit. Slumbering. Dreaming. That was all that was left now. No memory. No culture. No language.

Commander Carrone Bet. Female Catullan, diplomatic experience, little to no ship-board experience. High test scores.

Master Chief Warrant Officer Zorala Khevalin. Female Denobulan, over 350 years old, dour, short and squat, sneaky in her own right. Sounds like the perfect personality for the USS Doohan.

Lieutenant Jack Samuels. Male Human, security officer of the USS Doohan.

Dr. Stan Adams. Male Human, astronomer on the UF Theta Seven sub-space telescope observatory platform, studying the Expanse.

Warrant Officer Sunvace. Male Tiburonian technician, stationed at Nearby starbase Sierra

Commander Zoe Nichols. Female Human, chief engineer.

Chief Steward Bruce Jefferson. Male Earthling, quiet, professional steward and long time, close friend and ally of Captain Williams. Keeps track of dietary needs of all the senior staff aboard.

---

I hope everyone contributes and makes this a rich and engaging, funny, and serious Trek tale.

-Will

 

[Will The Serious]

The story:

Deeper into the Final Frontier

The Stardate is 2417.5
The final inspection of the USS Doohan, a Hoover class starship, was in its last inspection before commission to explore the Typhon Expanse. The Typhon Expanse is a newly discovered region of space on the far end of the Romulan Empire, within Federation space in the Beta sector. The unusual temporal distortions picked out by the Theta Seven sub-space telescope observatory platform has left Starfleet astronomers with more questions than answers.

Newly promoted Captain Caspian (Casper) Williams, sometimes referred to as “the friendly ghost” was going over his orders in the temporary quarters provided on the Moon's surface. Williams was particularly interested in making sure he has a great chief engineer, and a first officer who understood how to let the right people do the right jobs, and then allow them to work on their own terms.

His choices for engineers were between three candidates, but he was pretty sure of his choice from that pool. Intelligence was, of course, important, but to Captain Williams, creativity was the single most important attribute a chief engineer could have. On that front, there was a clear front runner. It was his first that was hard for him to choose. One was a veteran of the Battle of the Binary Stars against the Klingons, having served aboard the USS Dana, another Hoover class starship.

That meant instant familiarity with the Doohan's systems and layout, as well as a tested record serving under command in battle conditions. To Williams, being good in a fight was only a secondary concern.

Casper wasn't referred to as the “Friendly Ghost” just because of his name. Williams had an uncanny skill at predicting the movements of the enemy, at least in simulations and on maneuvers, and not being where his hunters expected him to be. Williams had somehow managed to escape a classic pincer attack and emerged from behind an asteroid on the opposite side of the mock battlefield, gaining an advantage that let him destroy two out of four “enemy” before their forwards focused sensors ever knew he was there. He'd had to undergo an investigation into charges of cheating, specifically using a cloaking device, before his team was awarded the win.

To Captain Caspian Williams, direct military action was a last resort. That's why his second candidate was so appealing. The records listed extensive experience in the Diplomatic Corp, and great great results, but very little experience onboard ship.

-

T’Nilz, a female Klingon was, like Captain Williams, a ghost, when it came to moving among the enemy. She had been able to land on Earth's moon, infiltrate the Lunar Shipyards and download sensitive defence information about the construction of several Constitution class cruisers and a Dreadnought starship. She hacked a maintenance terminal and worked at decrypting their orders, but before her positronic key generator could finish, she was interrupted by a janitorial bot. It moved its mop pod in a swirling motion around the corner and came hovering just above the quiet swish of its cleaning pod to within sight of T'Nilz waiting for the data wall to fall.

Before the mechanical janitor could connect to the station's security and advise, T'Nilz hit the robot with a charge loader and shorted the machine's circuitry. This was no reprieve for the sneaky Klingon. Any robotic machinery that broke down was instantly identified by its break with the station's maintenance system and a mechanic, either machine or living, would be on its way to repair the damage. T'Nilz couldn't stay.

She casted quickly around to assess her environment again and reached for a luminal power outlet that supplied auxiliary power for portable tools. She turned its emitter anode and shoved the deactivated bot into line. She quickly tapped the activate stud on top and took off in the opposite direction of the footsteps she heard approaching. A spark and pop from the energy beam toasting the robotic circuitry followed her into a deserted tunnel just as the maintenance woman and a hover cart rounded the opposite corner.

T'Nilz spent the next half day avoiding the various and very busy spaces of an active construction yard, getting backed into new and unexplored areas of the shipyard. By the time she was able to find a safe place for a Klingon hiding inside a Federation facility, she was onboard the Doohan, locking herself into a supply closet on the rec deck.

□To the beginning of Deeper into the Final Frontier

□ Jump to the next entry in the story[URL]

 

[Will The Serious]

The Schall'ert sensor cloak that T'Nilz engaged, since hiding aboard the Doohan, was running low on power. T'Nilz was unable to debarque from the deep space craft due to the sudden flurry of activity around the final ready-checks and the populating of the commissioned crew, in preparation for the ship's maiden voyage.

T'Nilz, from her closet, the Schall'ert device clipped to her belt hiding her from ship-board sensors, watched as more and more Starfleet personal moved about the ship. Fortunately, the Rec cabin was a low priority area and serendipitously included a food replicator and personal facilities she could access quickly.

Once, while she was incapacitated in a facilities stall, trying to workout some of the issues with Federation replicated food, three ensigns came in to take care of their own business. They clearly all knew each other from their recent graduation from the academy and were gossiping about their new assignment.

“I know I put in for a deep space assignment, but I didn't expect to be gone for eight years,” one young female voice commented.

Another young human woman asked, “What chance is there for advancements and promotions if we're away for eight years?”

The third ensign said, “When my roommate, Jana Haines, was assigned the Enterprise and it's five year mission, I actually felt bad for her. Not any more.”

T'Nilz tried to quietly finish her business and wait for the coast to clear so she could get back into her closet, but the whiny ensigns really got on her nerves. Finally she spoke out. She couldn't help herself.

“Why don't you three stop your wingeing, be the warriors you were trained to be, and get back to your duties.”

T'Nilz surprised herself with this loss of control, but the young women didn't seem in a hurry to leave the rec facilities.

There was a nerve wracking silence, during which T'Nilz considered different ways to dispose of the three bodies so that she might not be discovered.

Finally, one of the girls replied, “Of course, sir. Right away.”

Another girl was bold enough to state, “You do know you are in the women's head, sir?”

What? Of course she knew she was in the women's facilities. She was a woman; a Klingon woman, but they didn't know that detail. T'Nilz decided it was best not to reply and just wait for the three girls to vacate.

A moment before the facility’s doors whoosh closed, one of the girls told her, “cast-off is in twelve minutes, just so you know, Sir.”

□To the beginning of Deeper into the Final Frontier

□ Jump to the next entry in the story

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

If Starfleet was sending a ghost to explore the Typhon Expanse, another ghost was lurking there, ill at ease with the home that she had been confined to nearly a million years ago. The people who had confined her in that place were long extinct. Tantalizing bits of their technology and culture were scattered throughout the expanse, most of these samples, as they had fallen into disuse, having created and become embedded into pockets of subspace, partly by design.

What was a subspace archeologist's dream was also a navigator's nightmare. Travel through the expanse was dangerous and slow. With all these artificial, and in many cases decaying pockets of subspace, many containing artifacts grown treacherous with disuse and decay, relative space throughout the expanse was littered with gravimetric distortions that made cubes out of straight lines and tesseracts out of spheres.

As if to emphasize the danger posed by these distortions, a few hundred abandoned, dead, broken, and distorted spacecraft drifted throughout the expanse, leftover from hundreds of years of exploration by dozens of different cultures.

Stars within this region, observed from any distance less than a dozen lightyears, revealed these oddities in their own misshapen ways. Some stars took the form of cubes, some had spikes, others appeared as mobius jars. All of them were, and could only be spheres. But spheres existing in relative space that was warped around and by the ancient, abandoned technology of a long-extinct spacefaring culture.

Only a few of these spatial distortions were needed to create the bounds that held a single consciousness, her own physical body long lost, prisoner. Some of these had decayed, but their jobs were adequately performed by other accidental ones.

If Hecatellia's body was long lost, so was her sanity. Her consciousness wove in repeated patterns among and through the distorted stars. Patterns she had created millennia ago in an attempt to escape her prison. She had long forgotten that purpose and she wove her through her patterns out of habit. Slumbering. Dreaming. That was all that was left now. No memory. No culture. No language.

Just repeated patterns, dark dreams, and forgetful, unfocused resentment.

 

[Will The Serious]

Carrone Bet checked her reflection, while she tied her long purple hair into a ponytail, then twirled it into a bun on the top of her head to hold it in place with a traditional Kakkokee, a long forked hairpin of her people from the planet Catulla. Her uniform fit her figure well, but Bet couldn't keep her eyes off her commander's pips.

“Okay, first officer Carrone,” she said to her reflection, “time to meet your captain, I hope you're ready.”

Carrone Bet left her quarters and walked in a controlled speed-walk to the nearest turbo-lift. They were onboard ship, so she had to remind herself that saluting every spaceman she passed in the corridors was not only unnecessary, but impractical. In the old days, a sailor always kept one hand for the ship and one hand for their job. Starships didn't pitch and roll, but they were subject to the laws of physics in open-space, nevertheless.

Arriving on the bridge for the first time, Bet had to stop and take it all in. This was not an embassy, that was for sure. She had been on ship's bridges before, but never one that was to be her home or place of work. Bet didn't even think to look for the commanding officer, the one in the gold shirt with the captain's insignia on his collar, she just took a breath and took it all in. There were eight sailors in all performing checks, calibrations, or other preflight duties.

Bet finally scanned for the captain, feeling a little flush at the embarrassment of how that wasn't her first instinct. Bet hadn't met Captain Williams before and had no idea what “The Friendly Ghost” he'd been called alluded to. Was that some sort of ironic moniker? Was he notably “unfriendly”?

Before she could inquire, an O-2, the single dashed braid around his sleeve cuff indicating his rank of lieutenant junior grade, volunteered, “Captain Williams is waiting in his ready-room, sir.” The human male waved towards the port that led to the USS Doohan's strategic center.

□To the beginning of Deeper into the Final Frontier

□Jump to the next entry in the story

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

On every ship there was one person who knew every crewmember, every feature of every corridor, the location of every supply, and every capability of ship. Captains, executive staff, medical staff, engineering and security relied on this person. Their office was more difficult to attain than the captain's chair. The ship's quartermaster, master chief petty officer, chief steward, and the ship's planner answered directly to the coxswain, often the oldest person on board.

In a way, the coxswain was the soul of the ship and their personality came to be how the ship itself was seen by the crew. Hoover class ships were far from the fastest in the fleet, nor the most heavily armed. But they were remarkably tough. Squat, heavily armored, and heavily reinforced, it was one of the few classes of ship that performed well in an atmosphere and its low profile and rounded design made it a difficult target.

These characteristics seemed to fit well with Master Chief Warrant Officer Zorala Khevalin. She was squat, tough, and unusually dour for a Denobulan, and she was easily twice as old as anyone else onboard. Denobulans were one of the longest-lived species in the federation, with some living well beyond 400 years. If you were to pick a number over 300 at random, Zorala was probably a little older than that.

While her office was almost in the exact center of the ship, and she could almost always be found there if someone was looking for her, she seemed to show up all over the ship at a moment's notice. Her presence permeated nearly every corner of the ship.


At this moment she was terrorizing an errant junior grade lieutenant whom she had been observing closely for a few days: "Lieutenant Samuels, please explain the correct procedure for exiting a Jeffries tube."

Jack Samuels was startled. He had thought himself alone in this corridor just behind and slightly below the bridge. This wrinkled, ancient spider of a Denobulan had spoken quietly, from less than a foot behind him. He swallowed hard and tried not to leap out of his skin.

Technically, as a commissioned officer, he outranked warrant officers. But he was under no such illusion. Being on the wrong side of the boatmaster was very much like having the ship itself aligned against him.

"Um... Um... The door is to be closed and sealed?" He should not have presented this as a question.

"And what do you verify before and after sealing the door?"

Lt. Samuels was a security officer, not an engineer. He should have known this. "Um... Ensure no crew are present within the tube. Do not seal personnel inside..."

"Why is it so vital crew are not sealed inside the Jeffries tube?" Master Chief Warrant Officer Khevalin's voice was quiet, but crisp, each word enunciated precisely.

Samuels mind went blank. His features froze.

"Lieutenant Samuels, it is vital that you understand not only the procedures, but the why behind the how. You left the Jeffries tube under the main bridge unsealed, with no crew inside. I was observing. You did not verify the tube was vacant, nor did you engage the seal on leaving the tube. That tube is still pressurized."

"This is why it is vital to ensure no crew are present in the tube before sealing it, because the next step and the next thing you verify is that the tube is depressurized. Why is it vital that Jeffries tubes remain depressurized when crew are not present?"

Again, Jack Samuels was completely blank.

"Lieutenant, your duties require you to ensure that every Jeffries tube on this ship is correctly dispositioned and you must understand why. If components within the tube become hot, the absence of atmosphere allows heat to dissipate without rapid transfer to other components, preventing damage to vital ship systems, including the EPS relays. And things in the tubes can get really hot during battle or atmospheric maneuvers, especially EPS relays. The absence of oxygen reduces the opportunity for fires, and keeping the tubes disconnected from air recycling reduces the spread of radiation contamination if a vital part melts down. Making a ship like this work involves controlling a lot of poisonous materials and many of those poisons are housed within the Jeffries tubes."

"I will monitor your access to training and I expect you to achieve expert ratings in shipwide engineering safety and risk reduction within the next two weeks. I prefer to limit my observations of your failures in this area to my log and not link them to your personnel record. But do not think I will hesitate to do so if I see continued security and safety failures on your part or on the part of the crew who answer to you. Learn. Comprehend. Then educate."

"Yes sir," Samuels responded in no small amount of confusion.

"You are the sir in this conversation, sir," Khevalin replied. "My title is Master Chief Warrant Officer. And I have taken the liberty of ensuring the proper disposition of the aft bridge Jeffries tube. Although I would recommend you review the activity log on the door."

"Thank you, Master Chief Warrant Officer, I will do that."

"You are welcome, sir." Zorala Khevalin turned, walked a short distance, turned a corner, and vanished to some other part of the ship.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

If components within the tube become hot, the absence of atmosphere allows heat to dissipate without rapid transfer to other components, preventing damage to vital ship systems, including the EPS relays.

I had to double-check my science and nuance this a little. Heat dissipates much faster in atmosphere than in a vacuum. But that allows one hot thing to get lots of other things hot very quickly.

The coxswain typically reports directly to the executive officer, so Zorala would probably report directly to Carrone Bet.

 

[Will The Serious]

I had to double-check my science and nuance this a little. Heat dissipates much faster in atmosphere than in a vacuum. But that allows one hot thing to get lots of other things hot very quickly.

While the vacuum of space is described as near absolute zero, since there is almost no matter, the insulator value of the near perfect vacuum means a body that generates heat will not lose that heat through conduction, only through radiation. Astronauts on a space walk, absorb radiant (light) energy from the sun and have to include cooling systems in their EVA suits, or they over-heat.

The cold of space is not a practical problem. One does not freeze in space until they stop generating internal heat and get out of the sun.

From the Google AI Overview on the duties of the executive officer aboard a navy ship:
"Command Structure: The XO is part of the ship's TRIAD of Command (CO, XO, and Command Master Chief) and assumes command if the CO is incapacitated or absent."

nice entries, rbs. I especially like the reference to Hecate, the goddess of passage between worlds, magic, and the dead. Prefect for the Typhon Expanse.

-Will

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

I'll be very interested to see what other writers do with our space ghost.

I realized I had got the science wrong, but there are still good reasons to keep the Jeffries tubes depressurized. If something gets hot, it could be sprayed with cold carbon dioxide to quickly cool it down.

Definitely hoping other writers will come and play in this sandbox.

Thanks!! rbs

 

[Will The Serious]

Hecatellia felt a…disturbance in the force, that held her confined. She was “asleep”, so that disturbance was like a dream. In the thousand millennia that she'd been imprisoned, the sub-space radiation levels from the surrounding stars that fed energy to the technologies that bound her, have been slowly increasing as the stars matured and more stars were born. The effect was making the space of the Expanse more and more confining for Hecatellia. However, by the same function, the ancient tech was affected, distorted, and degraded, like a motor that suffered galvanic corrosion in the flow of the same electrons that allowed it to operate.

Hecatellia tossed in her “sleep”.

-

Theta Seven sub-space telescope observatory platform was a bit of a misnomer. The Theta Seven sub-space telescope observatory platform was actually 128 platforms setup in a connected array across 1.3333 square standard Federation AUs. The largest platform was the median spectroscopy platform and central control station. It hosted 72 astronomers and technicians. The 127 smaller platforms typically hosted 12 to 20 scientists and techs, while some were completely unoccupied, and all of them were fully automated.

On stardate: 2411.9, in temporal relativity region 16, making the “event” astronomically concurrent with the launch of the USS Doohan over a thousand light years away, an anomaly alarm blared out for the second time in two years since the Typhon Expanse first came to the United Federation Deep Space Astronomical Laboratories’ attention.

“What is that?” Dr. Stan Adams asked, leaning closer to the readout in the Polyscopic Data Collector Lab. The two Tiburonian techs from nearby starbase Sierra ran over to look at the screen.

“Look at those levels,” exclaimed Warrant Officer Sunvace, the taller of the two. What is causing that signal?”

“That is the big mystery. Its origin is the Expanse, but it was generated originally in sub-space. That should be impossible. Intellegent life is the only thing that can explain it," answered Adams.

-

Chief Engineer Zoe Nichols gave the order to “Fire up the engines.”

Engineering began to vibrate with the deep, quiet hum of her drives coming online. Engineers danced their fingers over control panels, rheostat sliders adjusted to synchronize output cycles, and data feedback sensors sent their 9 nanosecond sampling signals to the ship's independent engineering computer, where it distributed the essential data to Chief Nichols’ monitors and to the bridge displays through the Doohan's central computer.

A monitor tech called out from deeper in the engines’ central power plant, “Warp coils charged!”

Nichols opened her comm to the bridge. “Engineering to Bridge. Captain, we have power. At your orders, sir.”

She heard Captain Williams reply, “Thank you, Chief. Any time. Bridge out.”

Zoe felt a small chill up her spine as she called out, “Engage! Slow ahead.”

“Engaging impulse. Slow ahead! Energy levels steady as she goes,” echoed back to her.

Chief Nichols watched the readings intently. Normally, engineering was not that exciting, balancing plasma flow, shunting energy gates to feed more here or there, but engine controls were handled directly from the nav stations on the bridge. For their initial launch from “drydock”, Zoe wanted direct control to react instantly to any possible equipment failures. She had informed Captain Caspian Williams of her plan, rather than ask. She left him with no concept that there were any other options.

Her visual feeds confirmed station separation, and she maneuvered the Doohan out to open space, then threw “the switch”.

“Engineering to Bridge. You have control.”

Williams replied, “Understood.”

There was a short pause, before the comm clicked open again, and the Captain said, “Course laid, here we go.”

The warp drives hummed. The roar of their coils pumping energy back and forth, bled through the acoustic dampeners for an instant before the synchronized interference waves caught up. The deck plates in engineering jumped and settled into a comforting vibration. Zoe smiled, she couldn't help it. Her face carried that silly grin through every last system check and double check.

“Perfect!” the Commander breathed delightfully to herself.

□To the beginning of Deeper into the Final Frontier

□

 

[Will The Serious]

What was a girl Klingon covert reconnaissance operative to do when she was stranded on a Federation ship racing through sub-space towards an unknown region that left the entire Romulan Empire and United Federation of Planets between the ship she was a stowaway on, and her home?

T'Nilz was lucky the Doohan was so new that her closet hadn't been a closet long enough to actually contain much in the way of supplies for the rec. area. But it was only a matter of very little time before someone replicated something, and decided to store it for later, rather than feed it back into the materials recovery hoppers. She thought maybe a move was in order. Crew decks, perhaps?

T'Nilz had cracked her way into the ship's manifests and personnel records, If she could find an empty cabin and move in, as though she were a member of the crew; the fact that no one was missing from watch, and these humans’ odd penchant for respecting each other's privacy, might mean she could live for a while undisturbed, closed up in an “occupied” crew cabin. T'Nilz squated and opened her micro mission computer attached just above her right poleyn, and got to work.

It didn't take long. There were 66 spare cabins, reserved for extra personnel, plus 12 whole suites on another deck, intended to host diplomats and their delegations.

‘What a waste of resources,’ thought T'Nilz, as she dismissed the idea that a full luxury diplomatic suite of rooms for some VIP and their staff might be the “best” place to hide. Even an ordinary spaceman's cabin was more luxury than a hardened warrior should get used to. It would be difficult enough to pull something like this off, without figuring out how to explain an invisible diplomat. Humans were so soft and naive, she felt boldness was the better approach to valor, here. Why the Empire was worried about them was not easy for T'Nilz to understand.

There wasn't much in the way of supplies in the rec closet, as the Klingon had noted earlier, but there was a first aid kit. It was the recreation quarter of the ship.

On a Klingon ship, only personal space and a few court cubes were set aside for serious competitive recreation. Otherwise, most Klingon warriors worked out their aggression in the martial circle. Handball? T'Nilz almost snickered at the image of two prancing Earthlings thinking they were honing their combat skills by slapping a small ball around inside a little box. Why not add a small battle axe or a broad dagger to hit the ball with, and use when your opponent loses their focus? That would help hone that fighting edge!

T'Nilz found a good candidate for her more permanent hiding place. If she weren't so out-gunned, trapped aboard this ship, she would gladly risk a direct attack to capture the shiny new Federation ship, but there was no honor in suicide. That was lesson number one when she had volunteered to go through recon school five years ago. Apparently, the growing Klingon spy machine had suffered heavy losses in its early inception because warriors couldn't say no to a fight when they were set down behind enemy lines.

Okay, it was time. T'Nilz had to get up four decks and into the officer's quarters. She was going to have to take off her black body suit and cover up her Klingon features. Her plan involved bandages and a track suit she had pulled from someone's locker the day before. She hoped the sneakers, shorts, and sweatshirt were enough of a disguise. Klingon skin tone was a little more gray than most Earthlings.

“Hu'tegh!” T'Nilz chuffed out, while struggling in the closet to get the human sweatshirt on over her head. She should have put the bandages on last, not first. The QI'yaH-ing top was too small. Besides the neck opening having trouble fitting over her bandages, the elastic hem didn't stretch far enough to pull easily over her mammaries.

‘Are all human women flat chested?’ she thought to herself, unable to see, while teetering half naked in the confined space, nothing else but her light chafe guard covering her…essentials.

Finally she mashed herself into the purloined top and regretfully reached for the shorts. It seemed Earth women didn't have the hips of Klingon females, either. T'Nilz had a moment of respect for the women of any species that had to push a baby out through hips that narrow. Both top and shorts stretched to their max around the warrior woman, digging uncomfortably into places she rather they didn't dig into. Such are the trials of a warrior to bear.

When T'Nilz carefully folded her black body suit around her fortunately light and low profile armor, then stuffed it forcefully up under her already straining top. With the two cup shaped poleyns, the elbow counters nested inside them, it pulled the elastic hem of the sweatshirt up above her hips to the narrowest part of her waist, well above the low the straining waistband of her inadequate shorts, exposing her umbilical scar. The whole ensemble made a veritable caricature of her girlish figure. What's a girl to do? A warrior carries on.

T'Nilz would have taken a deep breath before opening the closet and letting herself out, but that was actually, as well as literally, impossible. Her scans showed the gym area currently empty, and there were only two couples in the “game" room playing cards. No one saw her exit the closet. That was most important.

Now, to get to the turbo-lifts.

“Excuse me, ma'am, are you alright? Do you need an any, um… can I I be of any…help?”

T'Nilz startled and turned to the voice behind her. She saw through her bandages covering her face, a young blond officer, a lieutenant junior grade, staring straight at her chest. As it happens, the semi-flexible armor that her poleyns were constructed of, each have a small blunt round protruding sensor right in the center of their cup shape. These allowed her to put exactly the amount of pressure needed on a surface, a door, a glass wall, anything that needed careful, precise handling, to both avoid making noise when moving an object, and as one of many listening methods through solid surfaces. All she had to do was press a knee against the surface and select her task by finger tap. She could slide or push a door with exact pressure, or hear a whispered conversation. They were diamond hard too, and acted as a force focal point, to efficiently break said glass, or a body, with a sharp knee strike. It was these two lewdly placed sensor buttons that the young male officer couldn't seem to rip his eyes away from.

“Commander!” said T'Nilz, adjusting her voice to be a little higher pitched, trying to sound like an Earth woman. She might have over done it a little and she sounded more like an old anime comic character. But she had never seen an anime video, so she didn't realize how she sounded.

If you don't want someone to pay too close attention to you, intimidation through rank is a good way to do it. Her “outfit” didn't show any rank insignia, so she decided to take the upper hand and out-rank her unwelcome solicitor.

The young officer's eyes shot up to her collar, then to her shoulders, then down and up her entire body. Finding no symbols of status, he finally turned his eyes to hers and nervously apologized, “I am sorry, ma'am.. ah sir…” his eyes flashed over her exaggerated figure again. “Ma'am! My name is lieutenant junior grade Jetson. I am happy to help in any way I can.”

He brought his heels together and saluted.

T'Nilz hesitated in thought. ‘Oh yes, return the salute, T'Nilz.’

The man waited with a fingertip to above his right eyebrow. She returned the salute, making sure to use her right hand.

The downward jerk of her arm caused the foundation under her stuffed shirt to wobble, and the young man's eyes got distracted again. The crewman relaxed only enough to drop his arm.

“M ma'am, if I might in… inquire, what happened?” he pointed at the bandages covering T'Nilz's face.

T'Nilz had prepared for this possible question. A Klingon would never ask another Klingon about an obvious injury before they had fully recovered. The bandaged woman chose a laconic approach. “Handball.”

At that moment the card game in the game room ended and two males came walking over, they were all eyes.

The young officer turned, “The commander,” Jetson stressed the rank, “is… um…” he turned back to the Klingon woman. “You were telling me… ah ah us, you were telling us what we can do for you, commander.”

The two new men hurried over and restated Lieutenant Junior Grade Jetson's offer. “Absolutely, ma'am. Anything you need, I… I…we are here to help you with...”

T'Nilz figured she could kill all three men easily enough, but, as lesson number one said, “There is no honor in suicide,” and lesson number two said, “getting caught is suicide.” Certainly she can't kill three officers and NOT set off a ship-wide manhunt for her, even if she managed to dispose of the bodies before someone else came along.

“I just was going back to my cabin to…rest,” It was almost painful for her to suggest that a little facial injury was justification enough to… rest, especially one caused by something as stupid as a handball to the face. Really, these Earthlings had no idea what honor and spirit was.

“Absolutely, ma'am. Let … us help you. The turbo-lifts are right over this way.”

The officious young officers decided to keep her company, even to the point of getting in the turbo-lift with her.

Thankfully it was a short ride, because Lieutenant Second Grade Bourne wanted to make “small talk” and was trying to ask about her origins back on Earth. At first, T'Nilz thought he was suspicious, and was trying to test her story, get her to show herself as not human, but he would interrupt his own questions with how he was from some place called Kansas. His family grew corn, he was related to…

‘Oh Qu'vatlh, the ride is over,’ T'Nilz thanked the universe.

They all three exited onto the officers' quarters.

“Which cabin did you say?” Asked young Jetson.

“59.”

Another male officer walked past and stopped, turned and asked of her, “Greetings, uh… ma'am. I would be happy to help, if you are looking for someone.” He couldn't stop himself from appreciating the almost absurd feminine vision that she was.

“She is looking for me!” stated a lieutenant commander, walking confidently up to the group of men and one woman. He was handsome by human standards, but all T'Nilz saw in him was slicked up weakness. The guy's hair was perfect, his five o'clock shadow was obviously cultivated, his teeth were the whitest teeth she'd ever seen. Plus, everything about his uniform said careful pressing and “please, keep your dirt off the fabric.”

Slick just had to ask, “what happened…uh…”

“Commander!” T'Nilz filled in for the man, whether or not that was what he was struggling to ask. She ignored the offered handshake.

“Of course, you are too gorgeous to be anything less than a commander. My name is Lieutenant Commander Ersatz. Are we neighbors? I definitely would have noticed you,” and here the cosmetic man was “refined” enough to pointedly look T'Nilz body up and down. “Before,” he finished.

‘Lieutenant Commander Ersatz, you will be the first one I kill, when the time comes,’ thought the disguised warrior.

The third officer from the rec. cabin, who hadn't yet spoken, said, “cabin 59 is this way. Just follow us,” and he waited for T'Nilz to follow him. Everyone else followed, as well.

‘Do they think I've never been to my own cabin before?” She wondered to herself, calling upon her very strong discipline to not say something out loud. After all, she hasn't been to the cabin before and it was actually very helpful to have it pointed out to her. And, since she hadn't already strangled the lieutenant commander, then she felt certain she had enough self-discipline for whatever she needed to do.

“I know where my cabin is, boys.” T'Nilz didn't know why she said “boys”, but it gave her a certain satisfaction to point out that they weren't “men”, in her eyes.

“Please, allow me,” said the latest and least welcome arrival to T'Nilz's new fan club. The lieutenant commander reached out and tapped the access panel, and cabin 59 opened for the group of men and the one woman. They all surged forward.

“Stop!” demanded the disguised Klingon woman in an undisguised Klingon voice.

All five men froze.

“Thank you, but…” T'Nilz used her anime voice again, “but I need to rest… by my self… alone?” She put a bit of a rise in her voice at the end; a question that said, “why don't you understand that?” without being so pointed.

“Ohhh… . Yes ma'am, of course ma'am. Sorry ma'am,” they all stammered out in one form or another.

The five men stepped aside and allowed T'Nilz to enter the empty quarters. She shut the port behind her.

“Qu'vatlh!” she let herself breathe out quietly. She immediately scanned the cabin then reached up with a groan of relief to tugged her stuffed top empty.

□To the beginning of Deeper into the Final Frontier

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

"I still remember that famous line by Dr. Cochrane: To go where no man has gone before. This mission is starting to sound more like going into no man's land."


It had taken a few meals for Commander Carrone Bet to get used to regular meals with her captain. Captain Caspian Williams developed close relationships with his division directors and department directors. And he did this over dinner. Having a talented, professional steward who knew the dietary requirements and preferences of the ship's leadership helped. Bet had initially thought having a captain's steward was an extravagance.

But within the first three weeks she came to understand what a tremendous asset Chief Steward Bruce Jefferson was to Captain Williams. Casper had befriended and attached the young steward to his service when he was still a lieutenant, recognizing talent and developing a very useful, silent ally.

The captain would dine alone on Sundays. His first officer was his guest and expected dinner companion five days a week, on each of which, a different senior officer was the third guest and center of attention. There couldn't have been a better way for the first officer to quickly become familiar with the personality and character of each person who answered to her. She was the new person here. Most of these people had served with Casper for years.

Tonight's guest was as new to the Captain as he was to the ship. She had come with the ship and almost seemed a part of it. She had served on the U.S.S. Doohan since the keel was laid. A dour, taciturn Denobulan almost seemed a contradiction in terms. Her combination of age, reticence, and seeming omniscience when it came to the U.S.S. Doohan conspired to make her a uniquely intimidating woman.


"The Typhon Expanse is famous for ships going in and not coming out," the captain responded. "Apparently, Deep Space Exploration thinks I am enough of a scientist to go into the Expanse and bring my crew back out. I wish now I had paid more attention in the science sections at academy."

"You have no shortage of scientists on board," Bet responded. "I think the situation calls for someone who will listen to them and not get bogged down in any particular specialty."

"Maybe our stowaway can help," Master Chief Warrant Officer Zorala Khevalin interjected, speaking for the first time since picking up a fork well over a half-hour ago.

"Stowaway?" Bet asked, turning from Khevalin to Casper.

"Apparently our chief of the boat thinks I am not the only ghost on this ship," Casper replied. "Do you still think it's a Cardassian vole?"

"Sure," Khevalin replied. "If a Cardassian vole was using a non-StarFleet tricorder to mask her movements, fool the Doohan's internal sensors, insert false records into the ship's automated logs, and was making unapproved use of food, water, waste reclamation, and feminine sanitation products."

"And you're just now telling me about this? Have you apprehended our stowaway?" Casper Williams asked.

"Whether or not to apprehend her is your decision, sir, which is why I was awaiting a moment of your undivided attention."

"You don't think we should move to interdict our spy?" Captain Williams was equally concerned and intrigued.


"Standard counter-intelligence procedure," Bet interjected.


"Leave the spy at large, track her movements, determine her objective while preventing her from successful sabotage," Khevalin added.

"That is a tall order," Captain Williams observed. "It's going to take a big team to pull it off. Smart people who won't arouse the spy's suspicions. What makes you think you can succeed?"

"Our spy isn't using our own technology against us," Bet observed. "She's an amateur."

"A talented amateur," Khevalin agreed. "Clever. Dangerous. But sloppy. And bold as brass. She thinks she can move into one of my cabins without me noticing. Cabin 59."

"So what are we up against, is this a Federation species? Are we dealing with a rogue element?" Casper Williams asked.

"Non-StarFleet technology that is capable of interacting with a StarFleet vessel and inserting false files?" Bet asked. "Who could do that?"

Khevalin ticked three fingers in response: "Romulan. Breen. Klingon."

 

[Will The Serious]

"If a Cardassian vole was using a non-StarFleet tricorder to mask her movements, fool the Doohan's internal sensors, insert false records into the ship's automated logs, and was making unapproved use of food, water, waste reclamation, and feminine sanitation products."

So the crew can't poop without approval? Just what happens to our freedom in the 23rd century?

I love this turn of events.

And, considering how many amorous males she ran into on her way to cabin 59, she might have to fend off an invitation to dinner from more than one officer in the neighboring cabins.

At least, she didn't try to hide in a Jeffries Tube

-Will

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

So the crew can't poop without approval? Just what happens to our freedom in the 23rd century?

I love this turn of events.

And, considering how many amorous males she ran into on her way to cabin 59, she might have to fend off an invitation to dinner from more than one officer in the neighboring cabins.

At least, she didn't try to hide in a Jeffries Tube

-Will

Every ounce of fecal matter is recorded and accounted for. What do you think the replicator re-sequences to provide you food?

Thanks!! rbs

 

[Will The Serious]

"Standard counter-intelligence procedure," Bet interjected.

Carrone Bet would have a pretty good education in spycraft, as a former embassy duty officer.

-Will