Star Trek: Cayuga
23 - ‘Material Sacrilege’
By Jack Elmlinger
Roslyn Collier arched her back upwards and moaned. Somehow Tom had procured a set of sheets that were entirely made out of Tholian silk. She had never seen so much of the fabric before, let alone revelled in the whisper of the ten-thousand count threads against her naked skin.
“Pozach to Riker.”
Roslyn glanced at the bathroom and she decided that it was best that she not disturb Tom. suddenly aware of her own nudity, she pulled the sheets up around her chest. “He’s momentarily disturbed, Captain,” she said, answering the captain’s summons.
Pozach was silent for a moment -- trying to guess who was speaking to her, Roslyn decided -- before she continued,” I apologize for calling so early. Please inform Mister Riker to come to my Ready Room as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Captain,” Roslyn said, lying back in bed. Tom might have to go to work but she still had some hedonism left in her.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“Really?” Sean Pasko scowled, fixing the makeshift bandage around Commander Survek’s head. “We shouldn’t be that surprised. ‘Romulan’ is an anagram for ‘immoral’?”
Jacqueline Yeager glanced over at him across the unconscious form of the Vulcan. “This isn’t the time to joke, Lieutenant.” She dug through her survival pack for a dermal regenerator.
He shrugged at her. “I couldn’t think of a better one.” At the sound of boots on rubble, he turned to see Sayvok. “Anything?”
The Vulcan knelt down beside the others. “It would be unwise to attempt to dig our way out. I believe that the ceiling collapsed on top of the rest of the complex.”
“We’re trapped here?,” asked Yeager.
“Possibly.” He nodded towards the darkness. “This tunnel branches off and connects to other tunnels. We may be able to find our way back to the surface.”
“All right,” Pasko said, pushing himself up to his feet. “The three of us will explore our way out of here and get back to the runabout.”
Yeager wasn’t moving. “We’re leaving Commander Survek behind?”
Pasko checked the charge in his phaser. “For now, we are, Ensign. We’ve got to hurry to make sure that the Romulans haven’t captured our runabout. Once we secure it, we’ll try to beam him out of here.”
“Carrying the Commander would not slow us down significantly,” noted Sayvok
“That’s true, but if the Romulans get to our runabout first… If they destroy it, or move it a few kilometers…” He let the implication hang in the air.
Scowling at him, Yeager placed a survival pack next to Survek. “Let’s go.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hisses and roars filled the room. Pozach warily eyes where she imagined that the hidden speakers were located while Doctor Moru waited patiently. When the incomprehensible noise ended, Commander Tom Riker said,” It’s Kzinti.”
“Indeed it is,” Pozach agreed with him. “The transmission is incomplete. What we can determine from it, is that it’s a distress signal.”
Riker shook his head “That can’t be right. The Kzinti don’t announce weakness.”
“This one did. In fact, it seems that one Kzinti destroyer group was ambushed by another. I would imagine they’re of different houses or clans.”
“We can empty out the Mess Hall and the Shuttle Bay,” Moru suggested,” using them as triage areas.”
“We’re bringing them aboard?”
“They’re in need of our aid.”
“And they’ll be tranquilized,” the Bolian chief medical officer added with a knowing nod of his bald blue head. Pozach frowned at this statement but she didn’t argue with it. She knew that in some matters, the Chief Medical Officer had the final word.
“Oh, that should be a relief. I’m glad that we aren’t letting eight-hundred-pound predators run loose around the ship.”
“We can’t just pass them by,” the captain replied. “Of course, they wouldn’t have put out a distress signal if they weren’t anticipating a rescue attempt. So I suspect that it won’t be long until more Kzinti arrive.”
“More Kzinti,” Riker growled underneath his breath. “Most people aren’t happy at the thought of more Kzinti.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“I’m stationing five security officers in Sickbay. There will also be personal guards for each of your doctors and nurses,” Lieutenant Ntannu told Doctor Moru. “I understand that the Kzinti will be sedated, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I’m not arguing,” the chief medical officer said over a tray of hyposprays. “I just ask you that your people try to stay out of our way.” The Bolian caught sight of Doctor Memrin and he waved her over to him. “I need you to take Taylor and Mykers to get Cargo Bay One ready.”
“How bad is it going to be?,” Corpsman Mykers asked once they had entered the turbolift.
“We don’t know how big that destroyer group was or how many survivors that there may be,” the Benzite physician explained with a shrug.
“At least if we run out of tranquilizers, you two can stun them with your phasers,” Nurse Taylor told the security officer lightly.
Leung shared a look with Tajin. “To stun, set, these weapons aren’t,” Tajin answered, her Horrusi monologue making her fellow crewman pause to think for a moment.
The Cargo Bay was a seething mass of activity. Engineers were anxiously moving equipment to the transporter or to the turbolift so that they could clear up as much of the deck as possible.
“Once you’re finished, lock down the turbolift!,” Zehna yelled over the ruckus. “The last thing that we want is some Kzinti getting his claws onto one of the quantum torpedoes!”
“Start laying out the blankets, Memrin ordered the members of her team.
“Give me a hand,” Taylor told Tajin. Their row of blankets had reached a stack of cargo containers when the Horrusi security officer froze in her tracks.
“On the ground, leaves… why?,” asked the security officer.
Taylor didn’t bother to look since he was too busy with tugging the remaining blanket from her stilled hands. “They probably got tracked aboard. Come on,” he urged her but she was already squeezing behind the cargo containers.
“Doctor Memrin!,” she cried out.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Oddly enough, the Captain wasn’t angry. Irritated, yes. Annoyed at the complication, but not angry.
“Welcome aboard,” she said dryly.
The Anuran’s branches shifted beneath the bank of lights that mimicked the wavelengths of its home world’s star. “Glorious,” answered the translator.
“Skt, when I left Anura, I placed you in charge. And yet you’re here.”
“Perhaps neither of us fulfills the other’s expectations of leadership.”
Pozach raised her left hand, the light-catching onto the obsidian band on her wrist. “I told the Glorious -- the former Glorious -- that I had other responsibilities and that I refused to become the master of your species. I don’t have the right to trample upon your self-determination.”
“It is our self-determination that leads us to you, Glorious.” Skt shifted forward. “This is why I placed myself as a burr upon your ship.”
“Which brings me to another point. We’re on a starship! There’s no soil and no sunlight here. You could have died. You were comatose when my officers found you!”
“Proximal dialogue must be established,” Skt insisted.
“Yes,” she agreed with it,” but not right now. We’re about to enter an emergency situation.”
Skt quivered before her. “Then I shall await the Glorious’ free moments.”
“You’ll have them,” Pozach promised it before she stepped outside of the observation deck.
“I don’t have any security personnel left to watch it,” Ntannu said, once the doors closed behind her.
“I don’t think that Skt poses a threat to us.” Pozach rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’ll find a junior officer to watch over him.”
The intercom chirped for attention. “Captain to the Bridge. We’ve reached the Kzinti battle zone.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
As the haze of the transporter effect lifted over them, Aimee Maguire laid a hand on her holstered hand phaser, though she didn’t need to bother with it.
The eight Starfleet officers stood in the large piece of debris in the battle zone. The section was nearly four hundred meters long, shadowing the Cayuga with its bulk. It was one of the few ships that still held atmosphere and had life signs.
“It looks like one of their engine drives was destroyed, taking out the entire aft hull of the ship,” Aaron Connelly said with his eyes on his tricorder. “The radiation count is pretty high.”
“We won’t be here for long, Aaron. Track down the survivors and get the pattern enhancers on them,” the chief engineer ordered before she began to follow her tricorder and the readings that she got from the bulkhead. The first Kzinti in her path was unconscious. He was pinned underneath a support beam that must have been impervious to even his massive strength. Dixon strapped a pattern enhanced around one of the aliens’ thick biceps and stood clear as the debris shifted clear from the vacancy left behind.
“Don’t get too far ahead of me,” he warned her. Two doors down from him, Maguire glared back at him.
“The lock on this door is encrypted. It’s a lot more complicated than the other encryptions that the Kzinti use.” She scanned the room beyond the door. “There’s a life sign behind it.”
Dixon scowled back at her, positioning himself between Maguire and whatever was behind the door. “Open it.”
Maguire looked mock-impressed -- Aren’t you a big, strong man? -- as she disabled safeguard after safeguard before she triggered the door mechanism. The door slid open to reveal a plush room filled with pillows and soft light-colored in pink and orange. The security officer stepped inside, leading them with his phaser rifle. A single small Kzinti sat on top of a pile of pillows. She watched them with curious green eyes, sniffing daintily at the phaser rifle.
“Meow?,” she asked.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“She seems to be in good health,” Zimthar Moru said, passing the Feinberger sensor from his medical tricorder over the small Kzinti. “A few bumps and bruises but the most intriguing thing is that she’s not trying to kill any of us.”
Pozach raised an eyebrow. “How… un-Kzinti of her.”
“Exactly, and combined with her small size and lack of coherent speech makes me think that she’s either very juvenile or mentally disabled.”
“The Kzinti wouldn’t allow a stupid child to live. Why a two-hundred-pound infant?”
“We don’t know about Kzinti development or education,” the Bolian pointed out to her. “She’s unharmed and she doesn’t seem to be a threat. I’d be delighted if you could find somewhere else for her to be. I need the bed.”
Pozach thought about his request for a moment. “Mister Ntannu has his hands full at the moment. I’ll have Ensign Polcheny arrange a space for her.” She glanced around Sickbay at the rows of silent, sleeping Kzinti. “How bad were the casualties?”
“It’s hard to tell. “We’ve got nearly six hundred Kzinti aboard but we don’t know, for certain, how many ships there were or how many Kzinti crewed aboard them. Our intelligence on their military is nearly two decades old and working for that, I would estimate around eleven thousand fatalities.”
Pozach shook her head.
The lights turned red and the wail of the battle stations klaxon nearly overwhelmed the chirp of her combadge. “Captain, a Kzinti armada has entered the area,” Riker’s voice wavered slightly. “We’ll be in weapons range within twenty minutes.”
“The Kzinti relief group has arrived?,” Pozach asked him, stepping over inert Kzinti bodies to reach the door.
“I don’t think that relief has anything to do with it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Pasko led the way into the darkness, feeling his way along the wall while he searched for an upward angle. “Keep a map of where we’ve been,” he called over his shoulder. The rock wall abruptly changed to a metal bulkhead and his palm beacon revealed that the tunnel had dead-ended into a cavernous room with crates scattered inside of it.
“A storeroom?,” asked Yeager.
“There is a wide variety of equipment in the containers. It is a reasonable hypothesis.” Sayvok altered the scanning mode of his tricorder. “There are no DNA traces other than our own here. I do not believe that the Romulans have found this chamber, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe there’s a schematic of the installation,” Pasko said, searching for a console. “Find us a faster way -- “
In the darkness across the chamber, something clattered.
“You said that there were no DNA traces!,” Yeager hissed at Sayvok.
“There still aren’t any,” the Vulcan said, altering his tricorder’s scan mode again.
Pasko motioned them back and crept around a stack of equipment with his phaser drawn out of its holster. Taking a deep breath, he dove around the corner and he came up, his phaser stretched out first, before he gasped at what he saw.
It stood no more than two meters tall. Its black and gold skin glinted in the poor light and it appeared to be composed of sharp angles. When it shifted its position, it did so on back-canted legs. Pasko gawked at it over his phaser, frozen by its single red eye.
“Greetings,” it said, the sound emerging, not from its mouth -- it had none -- but from somewhere inside its chest. “You are new to this world, are you not?”
Slowly and awkwardly, the pilot forced himself to lower his phaser and lay it down on the ground. “I’m Lieutenant Pasko of the United Federation of Planets.” He opened up his hands and said,” We come in peace for all of our kind.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
23 - ‘Material Sacrilege’
By Jack Elmlinger
Roslyn Collier arched her back upwards and moaned. Somehow Tom had procured a set of sheets that were entirely made out of Tholian silk. She had never seen so much of the fabric before, let alone revelled in the whisper of the ten-thousand count threads against her naked skin.
“Pozach to Riker.”
Roslyn glanced at the bathroom and she decided that it was best that she not disturb Tom. suddenly aware of her own nudity, she pulled the sheets up around her chest. “He’s momentarily disturbed, Captain,” she said, answering the captain’s summons.
Pozach was silent for a moment -- trying to guess who was speaking to her, Roslyn decided -- before she continued,” I apologize for calling so early. Please inform Mister Riker to come to my Ready Room as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Captain,” Roslyn said, lying back in bed. Tom might have to go to work but she still had some hedonism left in her.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“Really?” Sean Pasko scowled, fixing the makeshift bandage around Commander Survek’s head. “We shouldn’t be that surprised. ‘Romulan’ is an anagram for ‘immoral’?”
Jacqueline Yeager glanced over at him across the unconscious form of the Vulcan. “This isn’t the time to joke, Lieutenant.” She dug through her survival pack for a dermal regenerator.
He shrugged at her. “I couldn’t think of a better one.” At the sound of boots on rubble, he turned to see Sayvok. “Anything?”
The Vulcan knelt down beside the others. “It would be unwise to attempt to dig our way out. I believe that the ceiling collapsed on top of the rest of the complex.”
“We’re trapped here?,” asked Yeager.
“Possibly.” He nodded towards the darkness. “This tunnel branches off and connects to other tunnels. We may be able to find our way back to the surface.”
“All right,” Pasko said, pushing himself up to his feet. “The three of us will explore our way out of here and get back to the runabout.”
Yeager wasn’t moving. “We’re leaving Commander Survek behind?”
Pasko checked the charge in his phaser. “For now, we are, Ensign. We’ve got to hurry to make sure that the Romulans haven’t captured our runabout. Once we secure it, we’ll try to beam him out of here.”
“Carrying the Commander would not slow us down significantly,” noted Sayvok
“That’s true, but if the Romulans get to our runabout first… If they destroy it, or move it a few kilometers…” He let the implication hang in the air.
Scowling at him, Yeager placed a survival pack next to Survek. “Let’s go.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hisses and roars filled the room. Pozach warily eyes where she imagined that the hidden speakers were located while Doctor Moru waited patiently. When the incomprehensible noise ended, Commander Tom Riker said,” It’s Kzinti.”
“Indeed it is,” Pozach agreed with him. “The transmission is incomplete. What we can determine from it, is that it’s a distress signal.”
Riker shook his head “That can’t be right. The Kzinti don’t announce weakness.”
“This one did. In fact, it seems that one Kzinti destroyer group was ambushed by another. I would imagine they’re of different houses or clans.”
“We can empty out the Mess Hall and the Shuttle Bay,” Moru suggested,” using them as triage areas.”
“We’re bringing them aboard?”
“They’re in need of our aid.”
“And they’ll be tranquilized,” the Bolian chief medical officer added with a knowing nod of his bald blue head. Pozach frowned at this statement but she didn’t argue with it. She knew that in some matters, the Chief Medical Officer had the final word.
“Oh, that should be a relief. I’m glad that we aren’t letting eight-hundred-pound predators run loose around the ship.”
“We can’t just pass them by,” the captain replied. “Of course, they wouldn’t have put out a distress signal if they weren’t anticipating a rescue attempt. So I suspect that it won’t be long until more Kzinti arrive.”
“More Kzinti,” Riker growled underneath his breath. “Most people aren’t happy at the thought of more Kzinti.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“I’m stationing five security officers in Sickbay. There will also be personal guards for each of your doctors and nurses,” Lieutenant Ntannu told Doctor Moru. “I understand that the Kzinti will be sedated, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I’m not arguing,” the chief medical officer said over a tray of hyposprays. “I just ask you that your people try to stay out of our way.” The Bolian caught sight of Doctor Memrin and he waved her over to him. “I need you to take Taylor and Mykers to get Cargo Bay One ready.”
“How bad is it going to be?,” Corpsman Mykers asked once they had entered the turbolift.
“We don’t know how big that destroyer group was or how many survivors that there may be,” the Benzite physician explained with a shrug.
“At least if we run out of tranquilizers, you two can stun them with your phasers,” Nurse Taylor told the security officer lightly.
Leung shared a look with Tajin. “To stun, set, these weapons aren’t,” Tajin answered, her Horrusi monologue making her fellow crewman pause to think for a moment.
The Cargo Bay was a seething mass of activity. Engineers were anxiously moving equipment to the transporter or to the turbolift so that they could clear up as much of the deck as possible.
“Once you’re finished, lock down the turbolift!,” Zehna yelled over the ruckus. “The last thing that we want is some Kzinti getting his claws onto one of the quantum torpedoes!”
“Start laying out the blankets, Memrin ordered the members of her team.
“Give me a hand,” Taylor told Tajin. Their row of blankets had reached a stack of cargo containers when the Horrusi security officer froze in her tracks.
“On the ground, leaves… why?,” asked the security officer.
Taylor didn’t bother to look since he was too busy with tugging the remaining blanket from her stilled hands. “They probably got tracked aboard. Come on,” he urged her but she was already squeezing behind the cargo containers.
“Doctor Memrin!,” she cried out.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Oddly enough, the Captain wasn’t angry. Irritated, yes. Annoyed at the complication, but not angry.
“Welcome aboard,” she said dryly.
The Anuran’s branches shifted beneath the bank of lights that mimicked the wavelengths of its home world’s star. “Glorious,” answered the translator.
“Skt, when I left Anura, I placed you in charge. And yet you’re here.”
“Perhaps neither of us fulfills the other’s expectations of leadership.”
Pozach raised her left hand, the light-catching onto the obsidian band on her wrist. “I told the Glorious -- the former Glorious -- that I had other responsibilities and that I refused to become the master of your species. I don’t have the right to trample upon your self-determination.”
“It is our self-determination that leads us to you, Glorious.” Skt shifted forward. “This is why I placed myself as a burr upon your ship.”
“Which brings me to another point. We’re on a starship! There’s no soil and no sunlight here. You could have died. You were comatose when my officers found you!”
“Proximal dialogue must be established,” Skt insisted.
“Yes,” she agreed with it,” but not right now. We’re about to enter an emergency situation.”
Skt quivered before her. “Then I shall await the Glorious’ free moments.”
“You’ll have them,” Pozach promised it before she stepped outside of the observation deck.
“I don’t have any security personnel left to watch it,” Ntannu said, once the doors closed behind her.
“I don’t think that Skt poses a threat to us.” Pozach rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’ll find a junior officer to watch over him.”
The intercom chirped for attention. “Captain to the Bridge. We’ve reached the Kzinti battle zone.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
As the haze of the transporter effect lifted over them, Aimee Maguire laid a hand on her holstered hand phaser, though she didn’t need to bother with it.
The eight Starfleet officers stood in the large piece of debris in the battle zone. The section was nearly four hundred meters long, shadowing the Cayuga with its bulk. It was one of the few ships that still held atmosphere and had life signs.
“It looks like one of their engine drives was destroyed, taking out the entire aft hull of the ship,” Aaron Connelly said with his eyes on his tricorder. “The radiation count is pretty high.”
“We won’t be here for long, Aaron. Track down the survivors and get the pattern enhancers on them,” the chief engineer ordered before she began to follow her tricorder and the readings that she got from the bulkhead. The first Kzinti in her path was unconscious. He was pinned underneath a support beam that must have been impervious to even his massive strength. Dixon strapped a pattern enhanced around one of the aliens’ thick biceps and stood clear as the debris shifted clear from the vacancy left behind.
“Don’t get too far ahead of me,” he warned her. Two doors down from him, Maguire glared back at him.
“The lock on this door is encrypted. It’s a lot more complicated than the other encryptions that the Kzinti use.” She scanned the room beyond the door. “There’s a life sign behind it.”
Dixon scowled back at her, positioning himself between Maguire and whatever was behind the door. “Open it.”
Maguire looked mock-impressed -- Aren’t you a big, strong man? -- as she disabled safeguard after safeguard before she triggered the door mechanism. The door slid open to reveal a plush room filled with pillows and soft light-colored in pink and orange. The security officer stepped inside, leading them with his phaser rifle. A single small Kzinti sat on top of a pile of pillows. She watched them with curious green eyes, sniffing daintily at the phaser rifle.
“Meow?,” she asked.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“She seems to be in good health,” Zimthar Moru said, passing the Feinberger sensor from his medical tricorder over the small Kzinti. “A few bumps and bruises but the most intriguing thing is that she’s not trying to kill any of us.”
Pozach raised an eyebrow. “How… un-Kzinti of her.”
“Exactly, and combined with her small size and lack of coherent speech makes me think that she’s either very juvenile or mentally disabled.”
“The Kzinti wouldn’t allow a stupid child to live. Why a two-hundred-pound infant?”
“We don’t know about Kzinti development or education,” the Bolian pointed out to her. “She’s unharmed and she doesn’t seem to be a threat. I’d be delighted if you could find somewhere else for her to be. I need the bed.”
Pozach thought about his request for a moment. “Mister Ntannu has his hands full at the moment. I’ll have Ensign Polcheny arrange a space for her.” She glanced around Sickbay at the rows of silent, sleeping Kzinti. “How bad were the casualties?”
“It’s hard to tell. “We’ve got nearly six hundred Kzinti aboard but we don’t know, for certain, how many ships there were or how many Kzinti crewed aboard them. Our intelligence on their military is nearly two decades old and working for that, I would estimate around eleven thousand fatalities.”
Pozach shook her head.
The lights turned red and the wail of the battle stations klaxon nearly overwhelmed the chirp of her combadge. “Captain, a Kzinti armada has entered the area,” Riker’s voice wavered slightly. “We’ll be in weapons range within twenty minutes.”
“The Kzinti relief group has arrived?,” Pozach asked him, stepping over inert Kzinti bodies to reach the door.
“I don’t think that relief has anything to do with it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Pasko led the way into the darkness, feeling his way along the wall while he searched for an upward angle. “Keep a map of where we’ve been,” he called over his shoulder. The rock wall abruptly changed to a metal bulkhead and his palm beacon revealed that the tunnel had dead-ended into a cavernous room with crates scattered inside of it.
“A storeroom?,” asked Yeager.
“There is a wide variety of equipment in the containers. It is a reasonable hypothesis.” Sayvok altered the scanning mode of his tricorder. “There are no DNA traces other than our own here. I do not believe that the Romulans have found this chamber, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe there’s a schematic of the installation,” Pasko said, searching for a console. “Find us a faster way -- “
In the darkness across the chamber, something clattered.
“You said that there were no DNA traces!,” Yeager hissed at Sayvok.
“There still aren’t any,” the Vulcan said, altering his tricorder’s scan mode again.
Pasko motioned them back and crept around a stack of equipment with his phaser drawn out of its holster. Taking a deep breath, he dove around the corner and he came up, his phaser stretched out first, before he gasped at what he saw.
It stood no more than two meters tall. Its black and gold skin glinted in the poor light and it appeared to be composed of sharp angles. When it shifted its position, it did so on back-canted legs. Pasko gawked at it over his phaser, frozen by its single red eye.
“Greetings,” it said, the sound emerging, not from its mouth -- it had none -- but from somewhere inside its chest. “You are new to this world, are you not?”
Slowly and awkwardly, the pilot forced himself to lower his phaser and lay it down on the ground. “I’m Lieutenant Pasko of the United Federation of Planets.” He opened up his hands and said,” We come in peace for all of our kind.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
