Star Trek: Cayuga
20 - ‘Old Things’
By Jack Elmlinger
With a small sigh of relief, Aimee Maguire stripped off her three rank pips, her combadge, and finally her uniform jacket. She dropped them down onto the couch before she plunked down at the table. “So what’s for dinner?,” she asked.
“Crepes,” Sean Pasko said, setting a plateful of them onto the table. “I’m told that they don’t have any snails in them.”
“Snails,” Jeanne Pozach repeated admonishingly. “I lived in Paris for thirteen years and I’ll have you know that they make excellent escargots.” She sat down and helped herself to a crepe. “How’re things in Engineering?”
“Fenzel came over from the Juneau,” Aimee said as she began to unbraid her hair. “He gave me a few tips for tweaking our sensors.”
“Oh, Alice had an idea,” Pasko said over a forkful of crepe. “She wanted to go on a double date with you and Sam. She said that she found a nice holo-program aboard the Juneau.”
Maguire frowned at the suggestion. “Sam? I told him that it was over between us, weeks ago. I’m game though if you want to make it a threesome.” Pozach stifled a laugh and the engineer continued,” Did she ever talk to you? Because while we were down on Gianwu II, she was all, ‘Sean this’ and ‘Sean that’.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate for dinner conversation. That or threesomes.”
“Hey, I just wanted to come along, even without Sam. It’s just a word.”
“Our love life isn’t something that can be treated casually.”
“It sounds like you gained a girlfriend but you lost your sense of humor.”
Pasko leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t think that sexuality is a toy.”
“What was it that you said once?,” Maguire asked him, bringing a finger to her lips. “‘I thought that we were supposed to respect other people’s beliefs?’”
“Enough,” ordered Pozach.
Pasko sat back in his chair, feeling chastened and Maguire smirked back at him.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
If you closed your eyes and squinted at Vasily Keitsev, it would almost seem like he was moving up in the world. He lived in his own quarters. He was free from his tiresome duties and his stuffy uniform was nowhere to be found.
If you opened your eyes a little more, though, you would notice it was Crewman Leung who guarded his door during Alpha-shift. He was a nice guy but he was disinclined to let him wander around the ship. The only meaningful interaction that the prisoner had were his weekly dinners with Captain Pozach and every other meal took place in the Mess Hall where it was filled with distrust. While it wasn’t accurate to say that he regretted his time with the Maquis, it wasn’t necessarily the same thing as not being sorry.
“Why did you have to be so mean to Aimee, Vasily?”
Keitsev had crafted a bevy of responses to that question during his incarceration. He had one for Pozach. One for Pasko. And an answer for Maguire herself that he hoped that he would never have to use. Despite all of his preparation, no one had asked him until now.
Standing with her hands on her hips like a temperamental teapot, Alice Polcheny was demanding an answer from him and he found it difficult to be glib about his answer.
“We were on different sides. It wasn’t anything personal,” he said after a pause that he hoped that she didn’t hear. “I noticed that nobody got too upset once zh’Tali got through with me.”
Polcheny was framing a response to his statement when her combadge chirped. “Senior staff, report to the Situation Room. Beta Shift, report to the Bridge.”
Keitsev was halfway to his feet when Polcheny’s gaze pinned him down. “I’ll stay here,” he said, recovering gracefully before he sunk back down into his chair. She was already gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“The planet in question is Quernus,” Commander Survek explained from the Situation Room viewscreen. “Both the Tholians and the Kzinti have claimed it in the course of imperialist expansion and a number of skirmishes have occurred there over the last two hundred years. The most recent incident had apparently unearthed an object of an unknown origin.”
Pasko smirked at this. “And now they’ve come, screaming bloody murder and asking for our help.”
The Vulcan inclined his chin slightly. “It is as you say, Lieutenant.”
“The Tholians and the Kzinti have declared a ceasefire for the moment,” Pozach said,” which is an indication to me about how seriously they take whatever we find. We’re sending security teams down. So is the Juneau to figure out what’s got them so spooked.”
“What are we facing exactly?,” Ntannu asked her. Pasko’s amusement and Pozach’s confidence aside, it was his security personnel going into the face of danger. Anything that made the Tholians panic and the Kzinti shake with fear was due both his consideration and his respect.
“Unknown. There doesn’t seem to be any imminent threat.” She moved on with the conversation, leaving the Ktarian unsatisfied with her answer. “We’re due at Quernus in seven hours. I’ll be beaming down with Captain M’Roaki and Councilor Bokam to see what we can learn. Mister Ntannu, you’ll be working with Lieutenant Commander Briannon to secure the area.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The transporter beam released its hold on them and Captain Amaara M’Roaki wasted no time at all. “Who’s in charge here?,” she demanded to know.
Furry feline faces almost like M’Roaki’s twisted towards the away team. “Intruders!,” one of them hissed at them.
Before M’Roaki or Bokam could say a word, Pozach stepped forward with her hands, open and raised as a sign of peace. “We’re Starfleet officers and we’re here at your own request. We mean you no harm.”
“Starfleet,” one of the Kzinti said, snarling at them,” Apes… who use pretty words. Weak words.” He jerked his regal leonine head at the security detachment accompanying the away team. “You come remarkably well-armed for a ‘pacifistic alliance’.”
“What’s this crisis that you’re having?,” M’Roaki asked gruffly, taking a protective step towards Pozach. It was said that aboard the Juneau, she enjoyed a motherly relationship with her crew. They were her cubs and that relationship had carried over to the Cayuga and her crew since both ships were assigned to work together by Admiral Myrru.
“Ejeria, divine be His name, promised this world to the Kzinti for our use alone. Then the Tholians came, claiming that this is their world. Is there no divinity to their claim?”
“You mean we were dragged out here,” the Caitian captain asked slowly,” over a land dispute?!”
“No,” the Kzinti said,” you were summoned here to deal with That-Whose-Name-is-Forgotten.” His mouth split into a toothy smile. “Your lives are now worth less than ours.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Two months ago, Lieutenant Ntannu, as Chief of Security, had met with Captain Pozach and outlined his proposal for the continued training of the ship’s security department. Training that was similar to the training used during the war. She had politely reviewed the plan, listened to all of his points, and she reminded him that since the war was over, security officers were no longer required to be soldiers. To the Ktarian, the terms seemed synonymous except that his security officers were less than well-trained and more poorly armed.
With three dozen strong, the security teams from the Cayuga and the Juneau were standing at the bottom of a vast cluster. The scorched earth was still smoking, warming them through their boots. An abyssal hole had been revealed by the blast.
“It’s a couple of hundred feet deep,” Lieutenant Commander Briannon guessed, peering over the edge before looking over at Ntannu. “We’ve got our rappelling gear set up. I was thinking of six to go down in the first group, including you and me?”
Ntannu nodded at her and fitted the straps of the harness around his hips. When the belayer signalled ready, he swung his legs over the side and dropped inside. It was pitch-dark and the lamp attached to his phaser rifle did nothing to help.
The Ktarian security officer found himself counting off the seconds on the way downward. It was twenty-five ticks after he began counting that his feet hit the ground. Briannon touched down beside him and together, they began activating lampsticks, tossing them in a fifty-foot circle. The light didn’t quite reach the walls.
“We’re going to need to bring a portable generator down here,” the Juneau’s security chief commented as the other officers whispered around them,” and a whole rig of lights.”
Consulting his tricorder, the Cayuga’s Security Chief headed over to the nearest wall. Dimly, he could make out the delicate carvings. “No,” he whispered. “Oh, no.” He raced back towards Briannon. “Hold here. No one is to leave this chamber. Is that understood?”
“What? Why?” Briannon hooked a finger underneath her gold color, pulling her three rank pips into the light. “Maybe you should explain yourself, Lieutenant.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“You’re sure? I mean, really, really sure or not just kind of sure?”
Ntannu stood near the windows of the Observation Deck, staring at the hull stretched out before him. “Will you ever forget the look of that place?”
Aimee Maguire paced the lounge frantically. “What are the chances that it’s actually the same? That was one installation, hidden in deep space -- “
“So this is another installation like that one. Only it’s hidden on a planet,” Novack said from where he was huddled in one of the lounge’s chairs. “I’m more worried about what happens after we go inside.”
The doors slid open with a whoosh and Captain Pozach stepped inside. She seemed to be calm and confused but to Maguire’s trained eye, irritation was rolling underneath her exterior.
“Lieutenant Commander Briannon tells me that you were quite adamant about halting the operations down on the surface, Lieutenant,” she said primly.
“Jeanne, it’s a lot more complicated than -- “
“Be,” the captain interrupted her,” silent.” She turned her attention back to Ntannu and she waited for an explanation.
“I recognized the architecture and I thought that it would be best that we waited until the implications could be analyzed,” he told her evenly.
“Implications,” Pozach repeated. Her tone had thawed out a little bit, though she was still clearly suspicious.
Ntannu hesitated so it was Novack who answered her. “Whatever it is, it belongs to the same people who made that installation that we found.”
“Starfleet’s report on that incident was … thin.”
“The ‘incident’ featured Starfleet’s three favorite things to classify: the Borg, time travel, and weapons capable of causing devastation over galactic distances,” Maguire pointed out to Pozach.
“It’s still classified,” Ntannu added.
“That installation was a weapon,” the chief engineer told Pozach. “There was … someone… from the future who wanted to use it against the Borg.”
“And you guys think that what’s down there could also be a weapon?”
“We can’t risk thinking that it’s not a weapon,” replied Ntannu. “That installation was capable of destroying all of the metallic alloys within a hundred and twenty lightyear radius. There are, at least, four dozen Tholian, Tzenkethi, Cardassian, and Kzinti worlds in that range with billions of lives living upon them.”
Pozach considered this and asked,” What do you want to do?”
Ntannu straightened up in front of his commanding officer and said with great resolution,” We have to go down there, the three of us. We can determine if it’s actually a weapon before the rest of the security teams can come in.”
Maguire shivered, thinking about what they might expect.” I’m going to hit the Armory.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
20 - ‘Old Things’
By Jack Elmlinger
With a small sigh of relief, Aimee Maguire stripped off her three rank pips, her combadge, and finally her uniform jacket. She dropped them down onto the couch before she plunked down at the table. “So what’s for dinner?,” she asked.
“Crepes,” Sean Pasko said, setting a plateful of them onto the table. “I’m told that they don’t have any snails in them.”
“Snails,” Jeanne Pozach repeated admonishingly. “I lived in Paris for thirteen years and I’ll have you know that they make excellent escargots.” She sat down and helped herself to a crepe. “How’re things in Engineering?”
“Fenzel came over from the Juneau,” Aimee said as she began to unbraid her hair. “He gave me a few tips for tweaking our sensors.”
“Oh, Alice had an idea,” Pasko said over a forkful of crepe. “She wanted to go on a double date with you and Sam. She said that she found a nice holo-program aboard the Juneau.”
Maguire frowned at the suggestion. “Sam? I told him that it was over between us, weeks ago. I’m game though if you want to make it a threesome.” Pozach stifled a laugh and the engineer continued,” Did she ever talk to you? Because while we were down on Gianwu II, she was all, ‘Sean this’ and ‘Sean that’.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate for dinner conversation. That or threesomes.”
“Hey, I just wanted to come along, even without Sam. It’s just a word.”
“Our love life isn’t something that can be treated casually.”
“It sounds like you gained a girlfriend but you lost your sense of humor.”
Pasko leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t think that sexuality is a toy.”
“What was it that you said once?,” Maguire asked him, bringing a finger to her lips. “‘I thought that we were supposed to respect other people’s beliefs?’”
“Enough,” ordered Pozach.
Pasko sat back in his chair, feeling chastened and Maguire smirked back at him.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
If you closed your eyes and squinted at Vasily Keitsev, it would almost seem like he was moving up in the world. He lived in his own quarters. He was free from his tiresome duties and his stuffy uniform was nowhere to be found.
If you opened your eyes a little more, though, you would notice it was Crewman Leung who guarded his door during Alpha-shift. He was a nice guy but he was disinclined to let him wander around the ship. The only meaningful interaction that the prisoner had were his weekly dinners with Captain Pozach and every other meal took place in the Mess Hall where it was filled with distrust. While it wasn’t accurate to say that he regretted his time with the Maquis, it wasn’t necessarily the same thing as not being sorry.
“Why did you have to be so mean to Aimee, Vasily?”
Keitsev had crafted a bevy of responses to that question during his incarceration. He had one for Pozach. One for Pasko. And an answer for Maguire herself that he hoped that he would never have to use. Despite all of his preparation, no one had asked him until now.
Standing with her hands on her hips like a temperamental teapot, Alice Polcheny was demanding an answer from him and he found it difficult to be glib about his answer.
“We were on different sides. It wasn’t anything personal,” he said after a pause that he hoped that she didn’t hear. “I noticed that nobody got too upset once zh’Tali got through with me.”
Polcheny was framing a response to his statement when her combadge chirped. “Senior staff, report to the Situation Room. Beta Shift, report to the Bridge.”
Keitsev was halfway to his feet when Polcheny’s gaze pinned him down. “I’ll stay here,” he said, recovering gracefully before he sunk back down into his chair. She was already gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“The planet in question is Quernus,” Commander Survek explained from the Situation Room viewscreen. “Both the Tholians and the Kzinti have claimed it in the course of imperialist expansion and a number of skirmishes have occurred there over the last two hundred years. The most recent incident had apparently unearthed an object of an unknown origin.”
Pasko smirked at this. “And now they’ve come, screaming bloody murder and asking for our help.”
The Vulcan inclined his chin slightly. “It is as you say, Lieutenant.”
“The Tholians and the Kzinti have declared a ceasefire for the moment,” Pozach said,” which is an indication to me about how seriously they take whatever we find. We’re sending security teams down. So is the Juneau to figure out what’s got them so spooked.”
“What are we facing exactly?,” Ntannu asked her. Pasko’s amusement and Pozach’s confidence aside, it was his security personnel going into the face of danger. Anything that made the Tholians panic and the Kzinti shake with fear was due both his consideration and his respect.
“Unknown. There doesn’t seem to be any imminent threat.” She moved on with the conversation, leaving the Ktarian unsatisfied with her answer. “We’re due at Quernus in seven hours. I’ll be beaming down with Captain M’Roaki and Councilor Bokam to see what we can learn. Mister Ntannu, you’ll be working with Lieutenant Commander Briannon to secure the area.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The transporter beam released its hold on them and Captain Amaara M’Roaki wasted no time at all. “Who’s in charge here?,” she demanded to know.
Furry feline faces almost like M’Roaki’s twisted towards the away team. “Intruders!,” one of them hissed at them.
Before M’Roaki or Bokam could say a word, Pozach stepped forward with her hands, open and raised as a sign of peace. “We’re Starfleet officers and we’re here at your own request. We mean you no harm.”
“Starfleet,” one of the Kzinti said, snarling at them,” Apes… who use pretty words. Weak words.” He jerked his regal leonine head at the security detachment accompanying the away team. “You come remarkably well-armed for a ‘pacifistic alliance’.”
“What’s this crisis that you’re having?,” M’Roaki asked gruffly, taking a protective step towards Pozach. It was said that aboard the Juneau, she enjoyed a motherly relationship with her crew. They were her cubs and that relationship had carried over to the Cayuga and her crew since both ships were assigned to work together by Admiral Myrru.
“Ejeria, divine be His name, promised this world to the Kzinti for our use alone. Then the Tholians came, claiming that this is their world. Is there no divinity to their claim?”
“You mean we were dragged out here,” the Caitian captain asked slowly,” over a land dispute?!”
“No,” the Kzinti said,” you were summoned here to deal with That-Whose-Name-is-Forgotten.” His mouth split into a toothy smile. “Your lives are now worth less than ours.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Two months ago, Lieutenant Ntannu, as Chief of Security, had met with Captain Pozach and outlined his proposal for the continued training of the ship’s security department. Training that was similar to the training used during the war. She had politely reviewed the plan, listened to all of his points, and she reminded him that since the war was over, security officers were no longer required to be soldiers. To the Ktarian, the terms seemed synonymous except that his security officers were less than well-trained and more poorly armed.
With three dozen strong, the security teams from the Cayuga and the Juneau were standing at the bottom of a vast cluster. The scorched earth was still smoking, warming them through their boots. An abyssal hole had been revealed by the blast.
“It’s a couple of hundred feet deep,” Lieutenant Commander Briannon guessed, peering over the edge before looking over at Ntannu. “We’ve got our rappelling gear set up. I was thinking of six to go down in the first group, including you and me?”
Ntannu nodded at her and fitted the straps of the harness around his hips. When the belayer signalled ready, he swung his legs over the side and dropped inside. It was pitch-dark and the lamp attached to his phaser rifle did nothing to help.
The Ktarian security officer found himself counting off the seconds on the way downward. It was twenty-five ticks after he began counting that his feet hit the ground. Briannon touched down beside him and together, they began activating lampsticks, tossing them in a fifty-foot circle. The light didn’t quite reach the walls.
“We’re going to need to bring a portable generator down here,” the Juneau’s security chief commented as the other officers whispered around them,” and a whole rig of lights.”
Consulting his tricorder, the Cayuga’s Security Chief headed over to the nearest wall. Dimly, he could make out the delicate carvings. “No,” he whispered. “Oh, no.” He raced back towards Briannon. “Hold here. No one is to leave this chamber. Is that understood?”
“What? Why?” Briannon hooked a finger underneath her gold color, pulling her three rank pips into the light. “Maybe you should explain yourself, Lieutenant.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“You’re sure? I mean, really, really sure or not just kind of sure?”
Ntannu stood near the windows of the Observation Deck, staring at the hull stretched out before him. “Will you ever forget the look of that place?”
Aimee Maguire paced the lounge frantically. “What are the chances that it’s actually the same? That was one installation, hidden in deep space -- “
“So this is another installation like that one. Only it’s hidden on a planet,” Novack said from where he was huddled in one of the lounge’s chairs. “I’m more worried about what happens after we go inside.”
The doors slid open with a whoosh and Captain Pozach stepped inside. She seemed to be calm and confused but to Maguire’s trained eye, irritation was rolling underneath her exterior.
“Lieutenant Commander Briannon tells me that you were quite adamant about halting the operations down on the surface, Lieutenant,” she said primly.
“Jeanne, it’s a lot more complicated than -- “
“Be,” the captain interrupted her,” silent.” She turned her attention back to Ntannu and she waited for an explanation.
“I recognized the architecture and I thought that it would be best that we waited until the implications could be analyzed,” he told her evenly.
“Implications,” Pozach repeated. Her tone had thawed out a little bit, though she was still clearly suspicious.
Ntannu hesitated so it was Novack who answered her. “Whatever it is, it belongs to the same people who made that installation that we found.”
“Starfleet’s report on that incident was … thin.”
“The ‘incident’ featured Starfleet’s three favorite things to classify: the Borg, time travel, and weapons capable of causing devastation over galactic distances,” Maguire pointed out to Pozach.
“It’s still classified,” Ntannu added.
“That installation was a weapon,” the chief engineer told Pozach. “There was … someone… from the future who wanted to use it against the Borg.”
“And you guys think that what’s down there could also be a weapon?”
“We can’t risk thinking that it’s not a weapon,” replied Ntannu. “That installation was capable of destroying all of the metallic alloys within a hundred and twenty lightyear radius. There are, at least, four dozen Tholian, Tzenkethi, Cardassian, and Kzinti worlds in that range with billions of lives living upon them.”
Pozach considered this and asked,” What do you want to do?”
Ntannu straightened up in front of his commanding officer and said with great resolution,” We have to go down there, the three of us. We can determine if it’s actually a weapon before the rest of the security teams can come in.”
Maguire shivered, thinking about what they might expect.” I’m going to hit the Armory.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
