YES - Close to the Edge: Star Beagle Adventures episodes 12 - 19

[BountyTrek]

Reading that, I was starting to think "Hmm, a 212-year old Captain Phlox, eh? " and then the author's note mercifully confirmed I hadn't started fanfic-ing the fanfic.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

Reading that, I was starting to think "Hmm, a 212-year old Captain Phlox, eh? " and then the author's note mercifully confirmed I hadn't started fanfic-ing the fanfic.

Star Beagle Adventures begins shortly after the end of DS9, in 2375. We're in year 2 of the series - 2376.

The final season of Enterprise ended in 2155.

Captain Phlox was born in 2164, son of Dr. Phlox and Lt. Commander Elizabeth Cutler (who had moved from the ranks into the officer corps of Star Fleet in 2156.) He has an older sister, Flora Phlox, and a twin sister, Fran Phlox. (And a fair number of half-siblings.)

 

[Bynar0110]

I have to reread this and Hunter. I forgot most of the plot and episodes

 

[Bynar0110]

I enjoyed the latest chapter

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

I have to reread this and Hunter. I forgot most of the plot and episodes

I've been re-listening to Star Trek Hunter and hearing a number of grammatical errors. Must go correct them...

I have to admit, as much fun as Star Beagle Adventures has been to write, it doesn't come close to the epic feeling of the Hunter series. I'm reasonably proud of that one.

Thanks!! rbs

 

[Will The Serious]

I listen back to my own series and it is interesting how some errors really stand out when read aloud, that stay hidden just trying to re-read the text. I use @Voice as a free reader on my phone.

-Will

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

I listen back to my own series and it is interesting how some errors really stand out when read aloud, that stay hidden just trying to re-read the text. I use @Voice as a free reader on my phone.

-Will

Yeah - that really helps. I wasn't using it when I wrote the Hunter series, but I have been using it for Beagle. Some errors still get through, but fewer.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 15: Close to the Edge Part IV - Seasons of Man
Scene 13: Called to the Seed


Called to the seed, right to the sun…

15.13
Called to the Seed​

Although the U.S.S. Mako, which was towing the nacelles of the U.S.S. Escort and carrying the U.S.S. Arizona and the U.S.S. Bluebird within its primary shuttlebay, was separated by a growing gulf of lightyears from the following U.S.S. Beagle, which was towing the bulk of the U.S.S. Escort and carrying the U.S.S. Puppy in its shuttlebay, the personnel aboard were able to confer in more or less real time via subspace radio. The delay of less than a second went almost unnoticed.

Both ships were still some distance from the Al Salemais star system, but probes from both ships were coursing through the trinary system, cataloguing the planets orbiting each star. Two G-type yellow stars orbited each other at a great distance, completing a single orbit in just under 829 Earth years. A red dwarf, designated as Al Salemais C (ASC for short) orbited one of these larger stars (ASB) at roughly the same distance that Saturn orbits Sol.

Two planets orbited the red dwarf, with a dense asteroid ring orbiting slightly further out. Four other planets orbited ASB within the orbit of the red dwarf and a dense asteroid ring separated ASC from ASB and its planets. ASA had 7 planets, with 2 gas giants outside of a less dense asteroid ring and 5 rocky planets inside, including 3 M-class planets in the “Goldilocks Zone.”


The conference was taking place in the U.S.S. Beagle’s conference room and the U.S.S. Mako’s holodeck. Using a newly developed function of the Beagle’s unique holotransporter, an extension of the Beagle’s conference table was projected, at which projections of the conference participants from the Mako were seated. This effect was mirrored in the Mako’s holodeck, so that, apparently, all of the participants were in a shared space with Captain Howard and Dean Sakura Nakamura Holland at one end of the doubled conference table and Commodore Yui Song at the other.

The entire program had been designed by Pel, demonstrating that, to someone immersed in the vagaries of the ferengi economic system, the relatively arcane mathematics of holography were child’s play. Holographic systems required sufficient extensive use of imaginary numbers to cause most electrical systems engineers to quail, but even this aspect of holomath was dramatically outmatched by the basics of ferengi accounting, which had elevated the use of imaginary numbers to an art form surpassing the miraculous.


“You might think that the climates of ASA 2, 3, & 4, based on their distance from the ASA star, would be hothouse, temperate, and icebox in that order. But that isn’t the way planetary climates work.” The denobulan planetologist, Cetris Rye, was holding forth. “ASA 2, the closest of the three habitable worlds to the ASA star, is currently undergoing an ice age, while both ASA 3 and ASA 4 are supporting what we would consider temperate climates with ASA 4, the furthest planet from their star, being slightly warmer. All three planets have significant biospheres, including large oceans, forests, and highly developed flora and fauna.”

“All of these variations are in response to conditions local to each planet,” continued Phillip Gorman, the planetologist from Sierra Leone. “Conditions such as location of the tectonic plates and the continental bodies that ride on them, their impact on ocean currents, air currents, particulate matter from volcanos, all have a tremendous climate impact.”

“There is significant panspermia in this system,” added the enormous director of the Tellerite Biological Survey, Drisk javWalirsh. “Oddly, it appears that while life arose independently on each of the planets, that life was modified significantly by contact with single-cell life carried from one of the moons of ASB 4, carried by a number of asteroids that also brought water to those planets.”

javWalirsh brought up close visuals of the close orbit level of each planet. “Also, based on orbital debris, we have significant evidence that intelligent life, apparently arising on ASA 2, visited and colonized ASA 3 and 4, beginning almost 900 thousand years ago and continuing for nearly 60 thousand years, causing traffic in several species among all three planets. After nearly 800 thousand years, we can assume that the vast majority of those lines will have either speciated or become extinct, but the collective impact has been to homogenize the biospheres of all three worlds.”

“Unfortunately, due to the effect of Coulomb’s Law, any electromagnetic signals sent by these intelligent creatures would have faded into the e.m. background long ago,” opined Major Janet Carter, the commanding officer of the U.S. Marines’ elite reconnaissance unit, known by their nickname, the Space Hounds. “The only effective way to attempt to collect any residual signal would require sending a probe more than 800 thousand light years away. That would be eight times the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy. And even in the darkest, quietest corner of intergalactic space, we would not be able to gather much.”


Commodore Yui Song, along with the other leaders of the expedition, had been digesting this information. “Is there any possibility that descendants of the race that created all that orbital debris persist in this system?”

“That is a question that we have almost no precedent to answer,” Captain Ronald Howard, XIV replied. “I can hazard a conjecture…”

“Please indulge us, Captain Howard.” Yui Song managed to keep the exasperation out of her voice. It took an effort.

“We don’t see any evidence of subsequent orbital hygiene, such as humans and most other warp-capable species engaged in to clean up the orbital mess around their planet to clear the way for interstellar journeys,” Skip Howard replied. “So it seems reasonable to assume that if any of those populations developed interstellar travel, it was not along the lines of warp drive or any other form of travel that would require them to clean up all that orbital junk. Further analysis will probably reveal several periods of near space activity, separated by hundreds or thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years of inactivity, indicating the rise and fall of civilizations capable of local space travel.”

“The last of these went silent more than 800 thousand years ago. Assuming they did not develop another method of interplanetary travel, it is highly probable that their descendants are either extinct, or have evolved into species no longer capable of developing interplanetary travel.”


Shadow surprised everyone by speaking up. “Assume, for the moment, that either they, or some other capable, intelligent species, persists on one of those planets. If that is the case, the anointed, the people you refer to as the holy landers, will attempt to enslave them. And we will have led the holy landers right to them.”

15.13​

 

[Will The Serious]

We don’t see any evidence of subsequent orbital hygiene,

Neither do we.

I really like the concept of self- generated life being affected by a pansperma introduction of alien life. The basic, amino acid based life forms, probably all look nearly identical, no matter where they developed. DNA and genetic specialty has got to be a later development from early single celled animals. Life begining in one ocean, may look exactly like life that begins in another ocean. Their evolutionary development will be based on their environment and very subtle differences that begin to creep in.

-Will

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

The basic, amino acid based life forms, probably all look nearly identical, no matter where they developed. DNA and genetic specialty has got to be a later development from early single celled animals.

Particularly with the Star Trek mythology of the progenitors - an ancient race that seeded the galaxy in hopes that several planets would produce intelligent life similar to their own form. Thanks!! rbs

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 15: Close to the Edge Part IV - Seasons of Man
Scene 14: Now That You’re Whole


Now that you find, now that you’re whole…

15.14
Now That You’re Whole​

“Someone has been busy,” observed Lance Corporal Petra Spitze. “A whole lot of someones…”

“Creme de Rattleroot,” Glaffe javClirv responded. “Tastes better than it smells. And it does wonders for your body aroma…”

The tellarite herbologist was serving up a dish of foods that had been grown over the past two days in the soil of Al Salemais A4.

United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Petra Spitze turned her head, took a deep breath, then quickly popped a spoonful of the exceptionally foul-smelling gruel into her mouth, and tried not to retch. A surprised look of pleasure crossed her features until she exhaled, the breathed in again without taking the precaution of turning her head away from the food.

“See what I mean?” javClirv asked. “Smells awful. Tastes wonderful. After a few days, you won’t notice the smell. Because you’ll have absorbed enough of it into your system that you’ll smell just like it.”

Spike breathed hard, swallowed hard, then tried again not to gag.

“Which, in your case, will be a significant improvement, Stinky,” javClirv concluded.

Spike had grown accustomed to the jabs and jibes of the tellarites. Most of the time she had a ready insult to throw back at them, which had endeared her to the entire biological survey team. But at the moment she was too filled with curiosity to engage in the normal banter.

“So this meal is only from the one plant?” Spike gestured toward a freshly planted and freshly reaped field. “And you only planted it yesterday?”

“Day before yesterday, local time,” javClirv said. She pointed to the sun, which could be seen visibly moving through the sky. “This planet’s day-cycle is just over 21 of your hours. It actually makes the rattleroot grow faster. We developed it from a klingon plant and engineered it to grow faster, provide more nutrients, and re-seed itself to increase the crop in a very confined area. That small field will feed all 40 of us colonists for the next four months, providing us all the nutrients we need while we are sourcing local foods and growing other crops to supplement our diet.”

“We planted a crop. We harvested a crop. We’re living on that crop,” Spike observed.

“Making this planet a Federation colony under Federation law as long as no one has a prior claim to it,” javClirv said. “Like the intelligent species that have spread to all the continents and most of the islands on this planet.”

“We’ll just have to hope the holy landers aren’t familiar with that part of Federation Law,” Spike rejoined.


The new Federation colony of ASA 4 had been constructed in the caldera of a dormant volcano, which was part of an island chain in the middle of the larger of the planet’s two oceans.

Four large quonset huts provided sleeping quarters and a larger, mostly open building provided a kitchen, a dining area and general daytime shelter. Colonists were already building individual huts.

The entire Tellarite Biological Survey, a contingent of United States Marines, the planetologist Phillip Gorman, the trill oceanographer Akri Dexx and the elderly premiere emeritus of the Vulcan Science Academy, T’Eln, had crowded into the U.S.S. Puppy and raced forward at high warp from the U.S.S. Beagle and met up with the U.S.S. Bluebird, which had flown back toward them from the U.S.S. Mako’s position. The tellarites and the marines joined Commander Rhonda Carter, General Krank, Pel and Shadow in the U.S.S. Bluebird, which had then travelled at high warp to establish this colony on ASA 4. The U.S.S. Puppy, carrying the remainder of the colonists had arrived a day later.

It had taken another 3 days for the U.S.S. Mako to arrive in orbit, relieving the colony of the U.S.S. Bluebird, the U.S.S. Puppy, Commander Rhonda Carter and General Krank, to be replaced by the U.S.S. Arizona. The U.S.S. Beagle was still en-route, but Carter and Krank were already preparing planetary orbital defense.


“Do you really think this ploy about setting up a colony on a remote island on this world will be enough to keep the holy landers from trying to enslave the people of this planet?” Spike directed this question to the very elderly T’Eln, who had just sat down next to her with a full plate of creme de rattleroot. Other people would have been too intimidated by the former premiere of the Vulcan Science Academy to ask such an impertinent question. But impertinence was a Spitze family trait.

And as intimidating as the newly appointed planetary governor of ASA 4 was, T’Eln was a paragon of vulcan equanimity and egalitarianism. Her icy, emotionless demeanor made everyone around her feel equally beneath her.

“I have substantial doubts,” said T’Eln. “It is a rather impressive gambit and thoroughly human.”

“You don’t approve?” Spike asked.

“The Federation wasn’t built by vulcan pragmatism alone,” Planetary Governor T’Eln replied. “The principle ingredient has always been an almost miraculous reserve of human optimism. Commodore Yui made a tough call, but an impressive one. She could not protect the intelligent populations of two planets, so she chose the more defensible position in hopes of reducing the negative impact of our retreat to this system. An impressive blend of pragmatism and optimism.”

“It almost sounds as though you like her,” Spike suggested.

“You humans do indulge in a dangerous habit of anthropomorphizing everything and everyone around you.”

Close to the Edge Part IV - Seasons of Man
​

Notes:

This is the final scene for Episode 15.

The adventure will continue in Episode 16 - And You And I Part I - Cord of Life to be posted in this thread.

 

[BountyTrek]

Feels like everything's going to come to the boil soon. Can't wait.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 16: And You And I Part I - Cord of Life
Scene 1: A Moment’s Answe


A man conceived a moment’s answer to the dream…

16.1
A Moment’s Answer​

Gan Baatar had been born and raised on the artificial planet, Cun Ling, in the burgeoning city of Ba Sing Se. He had never been to Earth, much less to Mongolia, where part of his ancestry lay. At a young age, he had moved to the planetary capital city, Trantor, and become an engineer with Nakamura Enterprises, where his theories about warp field modulation had led to the development of some of the U.S.S. Beagle’s most advanced technology.

He was brilliant, hard working and at age 26, unmarried and rarely seen outside of his small office near the Beagle’s engineering section. It was the Beagle’s Dean of Ship, Sakura Nakamura Holland, who recommended Gan for the ASA 4 colony. He could easily continue his ground breaking work from an office on the planet, but Sakura was concerned that he was swiftly heading toward burnout.

Sakura had sent Gan ahead with the colonists on the U.S.S. Puppy. And instead of advanced computer equipment, she had given him a morin khuur. Gan had kept the instrument cased during the journey and had immersed himself in all of the tutorial programming that had come with it, managing to find a quiet corner first of the U.S.S. Puppy, then the U.S.S. Bluebird and had gone largely unnoticed among the colonists, who were dominated by a boisterous lot of tellarite biologists.

But the young engineer’s reclusive ways could not keep him anonymous for even a few days in a colony of less than 40 people. Even in the 25th Century, colonization took physical effort. In no insignificant way, that was part of the point. Every colony had to get back to the basics of cultivation and society building that was the commonality among all humanoids.

Digging, planting, harvesting, foraging… all these things were culture shock enough to Gan. But doing so in the company of a dozen rowdy, rough-edged, snarky, insulting tellarites along with a small contingent of United States Marines who had grown accustomed to, fond of, and acculturated to these beastly aliens… that was the real culture shock.


“Yesterday, you had a grand total of 3 words for me,” said the tiny, pink, slightly porcine and oddly cute tellarite, Norkaond Vef. “Let’s see if you can break that record today…”

Gan flinched as a massive paw landed on his shoulder from behind. “You just have to get him talking about something that interests him.” Even though Gan was a gangly 6’0”, the massive and bear-like director of the Tellarite Biological Survey, Drisk javWalirsh, towered over him. “I have it on good authority that talkative here will bend your ear for hours about the finer points of advanced warp field theory.”

Vef sidled up until she was almost touching Gan. The tellarites seemed to have no concept of personal space and would occasionally crowd in a group around their astonished human companions as if they were traveling in a cramped turbo-lift instead of strolling across an open landscape.

“Handsome here doesn’t have to talk to be interesting,” Vef crooned. “In fact, the nervous silent type here is a real…”

“So you have to show me this instrument you’ve been hiding in your hut. And you have to show it to me right now.” Gan had been uncomfortable around Private First Class Guz Maxwell, but at this moment, the young marine had become a gift from heaven. Guz sidled up to Gan’s left side, wrapped an arm around the young engineer’s shoulders and firmly led him away from the tellarites.

“Hey!” Vef pouted, only to be met with her director’s enormous laughter.

“Ha! Let him go, Norkie. You’ve been outbid.” javWalirsh laughed again.

“He’d rather go boy-boy than try on an alien,” Vef pouted.

“Nope. It’s all about you, Norkie,” javWalirsh joked as he landed a paw on the tiny, pink tellarite’s head and mussed her tuft of white hair. “Go fix up your makeup and try another day.”


“We have got to get you fixed up or Norkie is going to eat you for lunch,” Guz said quietly. “And I happen to know a very lonely girl who’s been making goo-goo eyes at you, not that you’ve noticed.” Guz ushered Gan into his own hut. “Now I have an ear for music and you’re not just good. You’re making me feel inadequate. And I’m really good. Show me this thing.”

Instead of speaking, Gan picked up the instrument and displayed it, reverentially, to his savior.

“The top is Fender skinwood. The only place it grew was on Fender Marsh. You can’t get it now, since the jem’hadar destroyed the planet. The strings were produced by the foozies… I have no idea how. They still live in a few places. There’s a colony of them in Wakanda on Cun Ling.” Gan Baatar had not said this many words since arriving on Rattleroot Island on ASA 4.

Gan suddenly realized that the young man sitting across from him was one of the few people he knew who could be trusted handling a valuable instrument. He had seen Guz play electric guitar and was impressed with the young marine’s sensitivity. It was only the thought of Guz being attracted to men that had made Gan uncomfortable. It had not been a conscious thought, but now that it had occurred to him, it also occurred how silly it was. Gan took a breath, then gingerly handed the instrument to Guz, who handled the morin khuur with the same reverence.

“Gorgeous,” Guz observed, turning the instrument over and inspecting it closely. “The horse heads on the bridge-plate and the tuning head are hand-carved.” He looked more closely at the neck, then the soundbox and the soundboard. “It’s all hand carved. And assembled by hand.”

“The bow, too,” Gan said, holding up the bow for the instrument. Tiny horse heads were carved on both ends of the bow. “Mrs. Holland made it for me. By hand. She had sourced the materials for it shortly after she recruited me for this mission.”

Guz’s eyes widened, stunned at the emotional value of the instrument he was holding. “The mother-of-pearl characters inset into the neck…”

“Her signature,” Gan confirmed.

“How long have you been playing?” Guz asked.

“This is my first instrument,” Gan replied. “I’ve been singing the songs all my life, but never really singing them the way they’re supposed to be sung. Now that I can play them…”

“We need a bonfire. We need a feast. We need to bring people together and celebrate this place. You. You’re it. You’re what we’ve been looking for,” said Guz.

“What are you talking about?” Gan was completely confused.

“You. Your songs. Your voice. You’re the most natural musician I’ve ever heard and I’m really, really good. Phillip’s really good. So is Falok. Cetris Rye is an amazing singer. But there’s this natural wildness to your sound. Something primal that we really need.” Guz handed the morin khuur back to the young engineer.


“There’s a big confrontation with those holy landers coming. We’re going to be putting our lives on the line for those weird vulcan-human-mushroom-shrimp that are just now taking up orbit around this planet. We’ll be putting our lives on the line for those lizard-riding, gorilla-people who live pretty much everywhere on this planet except for this isolated little island.”


Guz took a breath. “We’re even going to try to protect those giants on ASA 2. And the holy landers outnumber us at least 15 to 1. We need something to bring everybody together. Something that will bring it all home what we’re fighting for. Why we’re standing guard over a star system thousands of lightyears from the Federation. And it’s all there in your songs. I’ve heard it. I’ve heard you singing. Someone needs to speak for the wilderness. You are the voice of the wilderness. We need to hear that voice.”

16.1​