Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Sun, 16 May 2004 19:46:08 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: "Jay P Hailey" Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile 20 Soren The Elder Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey@hotmail.com) Series: ST-OM, OCC - TNG era [20/54?] Rating:[PG] Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Star Trek. I claim Original Characters and Situations for me. Webpage HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile Episode 20 Soren The Elder (Stardate 48323) by Jay P. Hailey and Dennnis Washburn The doorbell to my ready room chimed. I was grateful for the chance at a break. The Discovery had only been launched recently and there were a huge number of small problems. There was nothing inherently wrong with the ship, she just wasn't comfortable with herself, yet. This meant that I had to fill out about ten million inconsequential reports. Actually I didn't fill them out. I did read them before I signed off on them. I was the Captain and I was responsible. The Discovery was docked to Starbase Three. It was one of the oldest Starbases still in operation. Our trip there had been fairly short. With the new starship speeds, it was less than two days from Earth. Soon it would be taken down and moved further out into the Federation. We were taking on replacement parts and new crew members. This was the early part of our mission. The Discovery would patrol through the Federation, making goodwill visits to Federation planets like Abor, Mereau IV, and Agrene. This would allow the Discovery to fully shake out before she entered unknown space on her primary mission. "Enter." I said. This told the door that it was okay to open and it did so. In walked Soren the Elder. I could hardly have been more surprised if George Washington had walked into my office. I jumped to my feet and said something. "Sir," I think it was. Soren was considered one of the founding fathers of the United Federation of Planets. Okay, so he was two years old at the time. Hardly anyone noticed that anymore. During the early years of the Federation, Soren had studied psycho-history and xeno-sociology at the Vulcan Academy of Sciences. Then he had served on a Vulcan scout ship. Although the early Federation worlds were essentially unknown to each other, Soren traveled among them and studied them. Then he had gone back to Vulcan and set them on their ears by re-writing the books on xeno-sociology and psycho-history. After teaching his new sciences at the Vulcan Academy of Sciences for a while, he had been named the Vulcan Ambassador to Andor. He used this post to help nurture the early Federation through its growing pains. Soren had tutored Sarek and later Spock in the arts of diplomacy. His voice was heard and carefully weighed not only on Vulcan but at the highest levels of the Federation. He looked shorter and older than I would have expected. He raised his hand in the traditional Vulcan salute and said "Greetings, Captain Hailey." I raised my hand back. I couldn't remember the Vulcan for "Live Long and Prosper" , the traditional Vulcan greeting. "Greetings, Sir." I said. I stood there and stared at him in disbelief for a moment. He looked back. "Oh! Ah, please make yourself comfortable, sir. May I get you something?" I waved magnanimously at my generic office furniture. "Thank you. Some warm Vulcan tea would be nice." He said. I went to the replicator and grabbed Soren the Elder's tea. I wondered if I should preserve the dishes for posterity. "I have come to discuss our mission with you, Captain." Soren said. "Our mission, Sir?" I was shocked. George Washington wanted to come along on my mission? Soren looked at me again for a moment. Then he started to rise. "I see no one has told you, Captain. I apologize for the misunderstanding." He made to leave. "Wait!" I said. "You want to come with the Discovery?" "I came here with that intention, yes. But I do not wish to inconvenience you." "Do you know where we are going?" I asked him. "Yes. I have been briefed on your current mission. I have also read your reports from you previous mission. I find the areas that you visited fascinating." "You know that we are going to place a colony?" "I do have some familiarity with that situation." "I don't understand, sir. Why? You're an elder of the Federation. We need you here to advise us." Soren all but sighed. "I am aware of the way in which I am regarded publicly. I don't wish to continue in that role indefinitely." He was respected and revered. Many planets in the Federation valued him. "I'm sorry. I don't understand, Sir." Soren looked me in the eye. He seemed tired. "Are you aware that recently my mate died?" That explained a lot. Vulcans mate telepathically. The bond was intense. When one of the pair died, it was a traumatic experience. "I'm sorry." I said. "I grieve for your loss." "I wish a chance to pursue my studies in an area outside of the Federation." He said simply. "Do you understand sir, that this mission will take a few years? We might not come home." "I understand that." So Soren was an old war-horse who wanted one more run in the traces. Who was I to say no? "Welcome aboard, Sir." I said. Soren and his entourage were assigned as a diplomatic mission aboard the USS Discovery. He had two assistants and a physician. -*- Later I was on the station, taking a break when I saw a familiar face. Tillean Darvon Ahk came up to me in a little cafe. "Tillean!" I said gladly "It's nice to see you." Taking the seat across from me, I could see that she was somehow different. Not quite like herself. "I'm not Tillean," She said "I'm Tillean's sister, Kamaline." "Oh, pleased to meet you." No wonder. "Nice to meet you, too." "What brings you to Starbase Three?" I asked. Starbase Three was not in the direction of the Vicharrian Sector. Kamaline would have had to go out of her way to get here, unless she had some other business. "I was looking for you." She said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. I made her prove her qualifications but after that she was a sure thing as my new science officer. -*- Three days later the Discovery was cruising through the old frontier area. This was the corridor opened up in the first wave of exploration from the Federation. Further along this path were the Orion colonies, still neutral, dangerous and intriguing after two centuries. The Discovery was beginning to get herself together at this point. No major systems had failed. No such failures looked likely. The Colonists aboard were sticking mostly to themselves, and the crew was beginning to see the end of long shifts trying to get ahead of minor disasters. I was asleep in my quarters. They were huge. My apartment in San Francisco had been approximately the same size. I actually didn't know what I was going to do with all the space. I had a disturbing thought of trying to move out when the mission was over and using up my transporter allowance before emptying out my spacious quarters. Red alert sounded. As I was moving out of bed I heard the call. "Captain Hailey to the Bridge." The Discovery turned and her warp speed increased. -*- "Report." I said as I entered the Bridge. I noticed a clock that read 03:00. Ugh. "A couple of hours ago Starbase Five fell out of contact." Mendez informed me. "Starfleet has ordered us to red alert and sent us to figure it out." "Oh, Ghod." I said. Starbases can hold up to thirty thousand people. "How long until we get there?" "Twenty eight hours, fifteen minutes, at present speed, Sir." The Helmswoman informed me. Ow. I had a headache from the quick wake up call. "Thank you. Steady as she goes." I called up the data on my station. The Captain's chair on the Discovery had a big friendly panel hidden in a compartment next to it. It was better than the palm sized screens on the Harrier, but I wondered why it was hidden. Starbase Five was another old station. It was a major base along the Orion Corridor, way back when. These days it was a whistle stop. There was nothing too spectacular there. There were still fifteen hundred people there as well as traffic from many of the older freighters and traders. The Discovery was not the closest ship, we were just the biggest. The USS Achenar would get there first. The Achenar was an Ambassador class starship. Her captain was named Collins. He was from an old Starfleet family. For the next couple of hours I had Kamaline run long range scans of Starbase Five. We could detect no weird spatial phenomenon or subspace jamming. There were no ion storms nearby, and Starbase Five was too far from the star it orbited for a solar flare to interfere with communications. We had no idea why subspace signals weren't getting through. I had Stephanie, my Tactical Officer hail the starbase with every subspace channel that we could tune the comm-system to. There was no answer. -*- The next day we came screaming into the area of Starbase Five at warp 9.6. I don't think I had ever traveled that far that fast before. The Achenar beat us to the place by about fifteen minutes. While we were still three minutes away, the Achenar hailed us. Her captain was Neil Collins. He had a pleasant face. He had aged into his dimples and lantern jaw well. "My First Officer is aboard the Starbase now, Captain Hailey. He says that the base commander was surprised to see us turn up. He wasn't aware that there was anything wrong." "We'll be there in two and a half minutes, anyway." I said. "Why don't we coordinate on the investigation?" "Okay." -*- It took about five minutes to figure out what had happened. The communications system of the starbase had been sabotaged. No signals were acknowledged. A complex simulator program was running in the main computer of the starbase. It was mimicking all the normal routine comm traffic. >From the inside, no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. It took a couple of hours longer to pin down who had done it. Arthur Hendricks did not go out and pound the deck plates with the other Security Officers. By now, Stephanie knew him well enough to let him work on his own leads. Snoopy was usually productive. Instead, he had checked all of the base personnel records against copies in the archives of the Discovery and the Achenar. He quickly turned up a disagreement. The Starbase was certain that Marcus Dubois was Chief Petty Officer in good standing. The Discovery and Achenar were pretty sure that Dubois was a Lieutenant who had deserted. He was suspected of being a Maquis terrorist. -*- "All I want to know is why?" Captain Quiggley was livid. He was a short, round Australian man with a mustache that curled at the ends and sparse hair. Dubois was a thin man with long, gothic features. He answered calmly. "Because it was the right thing to do." "What did you hope to gain? What could you hope to accomplish?" This was Irwin, the Chief of Security for the Starbase. He looked like he had swallowed a sea urchin. I sympathized. This was going to look very bad on his record. Dubois grinned. Irwin and Quiggley were almost following a script for him. "I hope to gain freedom for my people." "Stop." I told the computer. The recording of the interrogation froze. "I don't know if I can watch much more of that vicious questioning." Stephanie said wryly. "Did he actually say anything?" I asked. Stephanie and Snoopy looked disgusted. "No, Sir." Snoopy said. "How are we going to get him to talk?" I wondered. "A little more of that, and he might snore himself to death." Stephanie was clearly put out by the inexpert and ineffective methods of Captain Quiggley and Lt. Commander Irwin. I would have had more sympathy if I didn't have a longer view. I was actually happy to be part of a Starfleet that didn't train everyone how to ruthlessly question prisoners. It was a mixed blessing in this instance, but it said good things about the Federation, anyway. "Never thought I'd miss Colonel Flagg." Stephanie grumbled. "Thank you, Lieutenant." I warned. "Any ideas, Snoopy?" "The clues are right in front of us. I can almost feel it. I can't see it, yet." He stared off into space, thinking hard. I adjourned the brainstorming session. Out on the bridge, I saw Mendez and Kamaline having their own session over by one of the Science Stations. Discouraged, I went to the lounge. It was on Deck Five, Section Fifteen, to Starboard. It wasn't as big as the Harrier's. It didn't seem to eat noise either. Often I had heard crowds in the Harrier's main lounge start to get louder and louder, trying to fill the space with noise. You'd just find yourself shouting to be heard. The Discovery's lounge was more like a comfortable cafe. It was just right for conversation. I saw Soren the Elder there. He met my gaze, and I knew from the eye contact that he was there to socialize in the quiet, logical Vulcan way. No one was at his table, although everyone was aware of his presence. "Hi." I said to one of our last founding fathers "Mind if I join you?" "No." He said. "What is happening?" I filled him in. As an Ambassador, he had major authority over the Discovery. Although the Discovery wasn't technically supporting his mission, he still had the pull on the basis of respect. "Hmmm. You say that the Maquis Agent sabotaged the communications system of the Starbase." "That's correct." "Yet, there seems to be no logic to this, as the Starbase has little military value." "Not only that, but it was less than thirty hours before the Discovery and the Achenar showed up. It seems like a useless gesture." "Was the Starbase in fact the target?" I thought frantically. What else might be the target? There was nothing else in the area, really. Just the Starbase and the two starships. If the Starbase wasn't the target, then it was a tool to get at something. The only things left to get were the Discovery and the Achenar. "Thank you, Sir." I said to Soren. He had just solved the mystery. -*- "Look at this." Mendez and I were on Starbase Five, talking to Captains Quiggley and Collins as well as their First Officers. "This was our position as of 01:12 on Stardate 48323.4, the day before yesterday." I pointed to the display and that cued to the computer to put the Discovery onto the map. "Here is the Achenar." I pointed and the computer added the other starship to the display. "The only things that are in range of the two ships are two automated subspace relay stations, number q745 and h784." "If the attack on the Starbase was meant as a distraction for the Discovery or the Achenar then the target must be one of these two things." Mendez finished. "Subspace relay stations? What would the Maquis want with those?" Quiggley said disapprovingly. He didn't like the line of reasoning. "Let's go see." This was A'Ken, the First Officer of the Achenar. I looked at Collins. He was thinking the same thing. -*- Automated Subspace Relay Station q745 was a wreck when the Discovery arrived. The small space station had been shot up pretty badly. The crew was all dead. It was mystery. Automated subspace relay stations are the size of shuttlecraft. They can be taken aboard tenders and serviced. They can be carried long distances and deployed by nearly all starships. What we found was a space station masquerading as a subspace relay station. We beamed aboard, but the destruction was intense. The crew was wearing Starfleet uniforms. We beamed several of them to the Discovery and tried to identify them. The computers insisted that there were no such people. The cause of death was pretty obvious, massive phaser burns. Small photon torpedoes and phaser fire had wrecked the station. The assailants had also fired a coherent tetryon beam into the station. With the shields destroyed by the weapons fire, the tetryon beam had wiped all of the station's computers clean. They were rigged to self-destruct if tampered with, but the programming about what constituted tampering was gone. We were able to reconstruct some of the files in the station's computer. We had enough to realize that the station was run by Starfleet Intelligence, and probably was a center of the anti-Maquis campaign. I reported to Starfleet Intelligence that the Station was off line and destroyed, referring to it as an unmanned station in all particulars. I didn't like Starfleet Intelligence very much, but I thought less of open, armed rebellion in the Demilitarized Zone. There were still elections in the Federation. I thought that this was the proper way to effect changes of policy. It bothered me that the whole incident with Starbase Five was intended to distract the Discovery. I wasn't used to being an important factor in the politics of the Federation. I would have to think carefully about the effect that the Discovery would have as she moved along. We beamed the dead Intelligence Officers back aboard their station and resumed our course on our goodwill tour. -end- --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.684 / Virus Database: 446 - Release Date: 5/13/2004 -- Forwarded to ASCL by: Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ ASCL is a stories-only list, no discussion. 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