To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Omakes in which these characters have appeared
Academy View
Comings and Goings
Spirit of 45 Gabriel

Around the end of 2319...

When a Vulcan and a Betazoid meet, there is always a spark of contact between the Federation's two most strongly telepathic species. The subtle web of Betazoid empathy reaches out, and finds itself deflected by the rigid mental control of a Vulcan. Except, sometimes, when it isn't.

"T'Wilit," cried Shayla Fluttrax, bounding across the medical center lobby to hug the other woman. At the same time their minds touched, T'Wilit allowing herself to be vulnerable to her old friend. Shayla saw the usual dazzling steam of logically drawn lists, an organized chaos of a mind. Carefully controlled by the lists were threads of mastered emotions. Sadness. Fear. Guilt. Bittersweet happiness from something recent. Untainted happiness from their current meeting. Through it all the flavor of T'Wilit, her silly, serious, friend. Still herself.

"It has been 2.7 Earth years since we last met in person," said T'Wilit, giving Shayla a careful squeeze.

Shayla let her go. "Oh, it has been a while. I just wish it didn't take... something like this to bring us together again." Her dark Betazoid eyes flicked briefly to fresh scars visible on T'Wilit's left hand, peeking out from underneath her uniform sleeve.

T'Wilit caught the look. "Do not be be worried; I expect to regain nearly 100% functionality in that arm, and the scars may be treated cosmetically... if I so choose."

"If you choose?"

"Perhaps maintaining a physical reminder of events on the Sappho would be appropriate. I do not wish to forget my time there, and after all Lt. Aronn will not be able..." T'Wilit trailed off, Vulcan control visibly straining.

Shayla took the other woman's arm and guided her to a small couch at the edge of the room. They sat there together. "Tell me all about life on the Sappho."

T'Wilit folded her hands and took refuge in the familiarity of giving a lecture. "As you are aware, Constellations are highly crewed for their size. I suppose you are familiar with that it is to serve on a crowded ship from your own experience with the T'Mir."

Barely enough room for even one pet- er, 'service animal', thought Fluttrax to herself. That was one nice thing about a ground side assignment like the 40 Eridani A Design Bureau.

T'Wilit continued. "Solitude has often been my preference, but the Sappho has a unique culture that I am told is a holdover from when Commodore Vol Chad was its captain. There were frequent informal celebrations for anything that could be construed as an anniversary and contests of physical prowess."

"Oh dear. That really doesn't sound like your kind of fun, T'Wilit. Applejack and Dash would have enjoyed the, er, 'contests of physical prowess', and I know Mitchie always loves a party-"

There was a pause and both starfleet lieutenants looked around to make sure lieutenant Peh didn't appear at mention of her name. After a beat, Shayla continued talking. "I hope it wasn't too hard on you."

"Not at all. Rartay was able to help me adjust... and in some ways help the ship adjust to me. Through my friendship with her, I was able to make many other friends aboard the Sappho. I will miss them." T'Wilit paused, and added. "Nor will I soon forget the day she convinced our first officer that sponsoring a 'costume contest' was a fine idea."

Shayla laughed appreciatively.

"It is strange to find it all suddenly taken away by ancient Orions. Doubly so given that we were involved with them before any others in Starfleet," said T'Wilit.

"The Sappho was the ship that found that wrecked Orion dreadnought, the Mahaler."

"Indeed. Both Lt. Aronn and I were on the party exploring it when it unexpectedly launched a drone. I was attempting to access the ship's computer system at the time, and I was able to make a partial recording of the command carrier wave. I later attempted to exploit that knowledge to disrupt the Orion Ascendent's control of its drones during the battle of Broken Chains... but that ended when the dreadnought turned its disruptors on the Sappho. Perhaps that was why it turned its disruptors on us."

Shayla's eyes widened. "T'Wilit, you can't blame yourself!"

"I apportion the blame where it belongs, on Empress Hayant. How much my actions affected hers we will never know. My research was destroyed with the Sappho's computer banks."

Shayla took her friend's hand, and they sat in silence for a couple of minutes before being interrupted.

"Sorry, is this where the 'sad your ship got destroyed' meeting is happening? Because Jacquie and I have totally paid our dues on that one," announced the brash voice of a familiar Andorian.

Lt. Dash sh'Rinboq and her Human friend Lt. Jacqueline Appel stood by the couch, having just arrived.

"I am gratified that the two of you could make it," said T'Wilit.

Jacqueline snorted. "And by that you mean you're gratified that we followed that transfer schedule you sent for how to make it in time for Rartay's release. That thing was longer than a Treblador beast's tail!"

"Hey, I'm not complaining," said Dash. "Lucky thing we still have some leave until the Spirit is repaired."

"Indeed. The Spirit's successful repair will leave you ineligible for the meeting," said T'Wilit with snark only a Vulcan is capable of.

Before Dash could respond, Shayla interrupted with a double hug of both her and Jacqueline.

"Oh, I can't believe I had to wait until now to do this in person. I was so worried about the two of you when I heard what happened to the Spirit. I know you sent me letters, but it was so terrible."

"Us still bein' around to be hugged is thanks to the hero over here," said Jacqueline pointing at Dash.

"Heh. Being shot in the back by a bunch of Tauni terrorists, and then having my butt bailed out by the Horizon doesn't make me a hero," replied Dash, uncharacteristically embarrassed.

"That shiny medal Starfleet gave yah says different. Anyway, you piloted the ship into the rings and away from the attacks. Me, I got trapped in a supply room for th' whole thing," said Jacqueline, mainly for the benefit of Shayla and T'Wilit.

T'Wilit nodded, then raised a hand. "Let us restart. It is good to have you here, my friends. Rartay's injuries were most severe, and I believe she will benefit from hearing all of you again. I know we have all made many friends since our days in the Academy, but the six of us have always been... uniquely well-matched."

"Six of us... if only Mitchie could have made it," said Shayla.

"Regrettably, the travels of an Explorer Corps ship such as the Opportunity meant there was was little opp- little chance for Lt. Peh to be here," replied T'Wilit.

"Heh, you say that and I expect her to walk through that door, showin' up out of nowhere like she always does," said Jacqueline.

Lt. Mitchie Peh promptly walked through the door, spotted them, and waved. "Hi everybody" She walked over while the rest of the group sat in stunned silence.

Jacqueline blinked hard, then grabbed the smaller woman's arm. "Mitchie, ah have to know and this is a serious question... are you magic? Do yah have magic powers?"

Grin not slipping a bit, Mitchie patted her friend on the head. "Just the magic of friendship." She paused a beat. "Oh come on, doesn't anyone check the news? The Opportunity was screening for the Odyssey during the Seyek membership ceremony. I took some leave and hopped a ride on the Odyssey when it escorted the Mark of Fiiral here to Sol system."

"Now we're all here." said Dash happily. "All except for Rartay..." she trailed off and looked at the door from the main body of the medical center into the lobby. They all did, but unlike Mitchie their sixth friend stubbornly refused to appear.

Breaking the awkward silence, T'Wilit spoke. "Lt. Appel, Lt. Peh, when we have some time I would request you give me the benefit of your advice and experience. I find myself soon to embark on an assignment whose nature both of you have some experience with."

After a moment, Jacqueline interpreted this. "They're putting yah on an Explorer Corps ship? Which one?!"

"The Atuin," said T'Wilit. "I do not yet know yet who will be captaining it, though it is an interesting coincidence that once again I find myself on a former command of Commodore Chad. I wonder if he left as great an impression on the Atuin's crew as he did upon the Sappho."

"Advice, huh," muttered Jacqueline. She and Mitchie exchanged glances.

"No matter what species they are, everyone loves a party if you can find the right party for them," offered Mitchie.

"If some varmint's causing trouble, put a lasso around them. If it turns out it was god, then at least you have a lasso on her," offered Jacqueline.

"Indeed. I had more hoped for- Rartay!" T'Wilit interrupted herself. It was their friend Rartay Aronn, exiting at last.

In many ways, Rartay looked the same. She still had the wiry but strong build of her Amarki heritage, skin pale with only the faintest tinge of blue. He hair was cropped shorter than they were used to, but it retained its usual violet color. However the sensor device forming a band over her face across where her eyes should have been; that was new.

Rartay cocked her head slightly as her friends all surrounded her in greeting, carefully identifying their voices. She accepted being led over to the couches at the side of the room, but she declined to sit. "There's nothing wrong with my legs, darlings."

Dash found the courage to ask first. "How bad is it? Can you see anything?"

If there was a pause before Rartay answered, it was brief. "I'm afraid my eyes were completely destroyed, and some of my visual cortex as well. The plasma was a bit unkind. Luckily there's a sort of back-up spacial sensing center in our brains... Amarkian brains. Starfleet Medical was able to hook up an interface between some basic sensors and that spacial center. It's not much... vague shapes. Distances. Enough to keep me from walking into a wall. No details at all, though, not even colors. Certainly not enough to stave off a medical retirement."

Dash's skin flushed dark blue with anger. "Those Eternal Empire jerks are going to pay. When Starfleet catches up with them-"

"Don't be angry on my behalf, dear Dash. I feel sorry for them. Awoken in the far future in a completely alien galaxy. Of course they're trying to return everything to how they remember it, and of course they're going to fail."

"That does not negate the damage they are doing or the need to stop them," said T'Wilit.

"No. It doesn't bring my eyes back either. But be a little generous. I don't want them to pay. I just want them to stop and see-" Rartay's voice broke a little. "-see that that they needn't... do this. If this ends in torpedo explosions and phaser fire it will be a shame."

The six departed the hospital and roamed the city, pausing to drink and chat and recall old times and catch up on new times. Eventually was Jacqueline who asked the question. "Rartay, what will you do now?"

The Amarkian gave a mysterious smile. "Well, my family wants me to come home. And I have an invitation from Tellar Academy of Mineral Science to complete a program of studies there. But I was thinking of pursuing my first love. I received an invitation nearly a year ago for a paper I published on inter-species costuming and style versus performance trade-offs. They wanted to know if I was interested in coming out to a research colony where the natives wear clothing that is, how did Commander Spentoor so delightfully put it? You'd have to be Risan to wear some of the common items in public."

Rartay pulled out a PADD and whispered a verbal command to it. Hearing a response in her earpiece, she slid it over to the others.

T'Wilit looked it first. "Tolinar VII? Access is heavily restricted due to presence of the remnants of a highly advanced spacefaring race. This would indeed be an elite posting."

"For someone so smart, you can be slow to see stuff," complained Jacqueline. "She's hopin' the highly advanced race has some highly advanced medicine for her eyes. Er... aren't you, Rartay?"

"I have some hope. But one way or another, the posting is real. I'll be signing up for at least a three year commitment. If the Tolinar can help me, that would be wonderful. If not, well it's a place where I can study the clothing of an ancient civilization and some exotic materials in the world's crust. Two of my favorite interests, fashion and minerals.

"One way or another, I won't let one shot from the Orion Ascendent destroy my life. I have things I want to do, and I'm going to do them, with eyes or without."

"And your friends will be here for you, always," said Jacqueline.

"Yeah!" said Dash.

"Whenever you need us," said Shayla softly.

"Indeed," said T'Wilit.

"My Mitchie sense says you're back in Starfleet in less than four years," said Mitchie. "And my Mitchie sense..."

"Is never wrong," chorused the rest of the table.

"Well it isn't!"

Simon_Jester said:

"Just a moment!" The woman in gold called out, then waded into the knee-deep water.

With the tip of her sword she etched alien runes into the timbers- a zig-zag slash, two semicircles, a short horizontal line. An acute angle and a circle, bracketed by a pair of vertical strokes. Then she smiled and climbed onto the raft, balancing carefully and closing her deep, dark eyes. Her toes flexed hard enough to be noticeable even through Starfleet-issue boots.

"There. All aboard!"

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

No Place
No Time
Down the River, Nearing the Sea

The woman reached out with the barge pole, fending off a tangled mass of floating branches. "The crew will need a bit of rest to prepare themselves for what may be coming. I think we should take a pause, scout the lay of the land, and take a meal." This she said, though Torg had never seen her eat. She continued. "I hear another river on the other side of those hills. The confluence feels like a good place."

They did indeed stop, where the torrent of blood from the tortured uplands of Gre'thor joined another river. This one bore sweet, cool water that somehow dispersed the red river's stench and color into something ordinary and natural. They laid into what provisions they'd gathered with a will, supplemented with a few otherworldly fruits and the first truly clean water they'd had in days. As they finished their meal, the pale woman turned to Torg.

"Could you have someone climb a tree and look around? This country has... loyalties. I'm not sure I trust my senses very far ahead."

The warrior K'mrek volunteered. Winding a rope around his waist, he began the ascent almost before Torg could blink. Though the trunk stretched far to the first branch, young K'mrek made his way up, sinking grips into the wood using a dagger they'd painstakingly ground from the horn of a great beast. For a dead man, he was still lively indeed.

Soon the young one reached the top and shouted down. "It's amazing! Come up and see!" He came partway down himself, and cast down the line.

So Torg did- it was a long climb. Unlike the stunted timber of the uplands near Gre'thor, the trees of this part of the otherworld were as tall and straight and clean as any he'd seen on a score of planets. Ahead the land sloped slowly down. Where the great river widened into an estuary stood a military harbor, protected on the landward side by a sturdy stockade and earthworks. Barracks in rows reached down to the seashore, the docks, the ships. And they were phenomenal ships!

Many kellicams away, he could nevertheless see them clearly. Their hulls drank the watery light of the otherworld, and yet there was no darkness aboard them. The warriors walking their decks flamed in the distance, wrapped in the fire he knew, the burning glory of Klingon success.

The Black Fleet!

Excited, the Klingons made their way back to the raft. The woman took up the barge pole again and they resumed their journey... until their boatswoman-guide frowned, probing the bottom of the river. "The water will be too deep for us, soon. We'd better go to shore, and come in overland."

---

This, too, they did. They saw no sign of work parties or scouts as they approached the encampment of the Black Fleet. Torg was surprised by this, and thought it coincidence. Then again, perhaps not; he noticed that the straw-haired woman accompanying his little band stepped cautiously here, with the instinctive caution of a huntress in the territory of a beast she would prefer not to rouse too soon.

Perhaps she had reason. As they approached the gate in the anchorage's great protective palisade, their first contact with its inhabitants proved less than welcoming. The sentry seemed to materialize, clad in the heavy leathers and armor of a fully armed warrior. She brought a disruptor rifle whipping around her shoulder to port arms, muscles tensed as though to raise and fire in an instant.

She hissed one word furiously, at the woman who had accompanied them out of Hell, her eyes suddenly bloodshot and lips skinned back in fury. "You."

The pale alien's right hand flew to her sword-hilt, drawing it a finger's breadth- and stopping. Her night-black eyes narrowed briefly. "I remember you. '56, wasn't it? And '68. And of course, '76." Her smile was a thin, mocking slash.

"What foul, slinking madness or treachery could bring you to defile this place? How did you get in here?" The riflewoman snarled, her eye on one who was obviously her old enemy.

"Through the front doors." The spirit in yellow smirked more broadly. Her left hand flicked back up the river. "I came in by the river gate, the same as you, for the same reason. Meet my latest, short-lived, crew."

The riflewoman spat at Torg's feet. "That is no prize crew. You are an enemy- and Sister would thank me for-"

She was interrupted. A greying man called down from the fighting platform behind the stockade. His voice held the tones of iron. "Klolode! Stay your hand. The peace holds here if the alien releases her sword. Which, I trust, she will." He was not questioning, but rather declaring.

The dark-eyed spirit smiled quietly, and carefully slid the blade back into its improvised scabbard. Slowly, slowly, as though fighting the call of her own heart, Klolode shifted her rifle back. And the old Klingon in the old-fashioned robes of a High Imperial general squinted down at the woman in yellow.

"Alien indeed, and native to a realm I know not. But then, so was my own storm-cruiser, a thousand years ago. Are you of the Empire, or aren't you?"

"I'm not- but your fleet is not the only one that knows its duty, admiral." She folded her arms. "I have my last crew to see to."

He grunted, then began the descent from the fighting platform, rounding the posts of the gate. "I see you recognize me. Do these- warriors?" Somehow, the Klingon general's voice lashed Torg with the impulse to deference. To instill this upon a Klingon was an art of command seldom found even among the greatest war leaders- and yet the strange old man had it.

Torg frowned, speaking calmly. "I do not, sir."

"I am Rynar."

On reflex, Torg asked the usual question. "Of the house of?"

The admiral smiled thinly, with a certain triumph. "I am Rynar."

Comprehension dawned on Torg. He knew that face, the oddly curling bone of the man's brow, from childhood picture-books. One of the great admirals of ancient times, a janissary captain risen to the highest levels of the Rebellion. Harrier of the Hur'q fleets. Conqueror of fifty worlds. Founding father of a mighty house.

Rynar nodded once. "Now, tell me your tale."

They told the story, up to the moment of their fiery death aboard the Enterprise, and the legendary hero's lip curled. "You- and your captain- should have seen that coming."

"Kruge is-"

"Your loyalty does you some slight credit." He laughed. "But I do not expect to see him here, in my anchorage, or that of my brother admirals. Which raises the question of your fate. Tell me all that has happened, since you came into this realm."

They did, and after it all, the tone of Rynar's voice bit into their souls- literally. "In the common course of things, you would have crossed into Gre'thor. How do you expect to remain here, among the Black Fleet? Who will remember you in glory, you warriors who died like fools aboard an abandoned ship?"

"I will." The woman in yellow folded her arms. "I'll see to it."

His eyes narrowed. "You swear?"

"On the honor of the Service. They've earned it, now."

"And you can make good on this... when?"

She smiled, with a sudden, genuine joy. "They'll call me back, within a few years. Jim will take care of it one way or another."

Rynar was silent for a long moment, then he turned to Torg. "In that case, I can spare you the chance to prove the mettle of your little band. A few centuries of swabbing decks and carrying spears will be enough." He smiled at the jest. "Or perhaps you will distinguish yourself, in my campaign next spring."

He clapped a hand on Torg's shoulder, and a sickness he'd never known he suffered burned out of the officer's body in that moment. "Welcome home, warrior."