Star Trek Section 7G: A Private Little Clusterfuck

Episode 45: "A Private Little Clusterfuck"

Extortion. The surest way to keep your job. These are the voyages of the starship Nixon. Her five year mission: To secretly follow behind Starfleet's "golden boy," Captain James T. Kirk and fix his fuck ups before they get out of hand. To cover shit up and never let him know what's going on.

Captain's Log: Stardate 4218.4 Christ, just when I think that Kirk can't screw up any worse, he goes and fucks up what should have been a simple mission. Granted, no one expected that the Klingons would be mucking about, but the man didn't even bother following basic mission protocols when they beamed down. Instead of showing up in the native costumes and talking to the locals about the pharmacological plants, he tries to do a "smash and grab" and its only by accident that they discover what the Klingons have been up to. Somehow, I'm going to have to fix this mess without tipping off the Klingons, or letting Kirk screw something up on his next stop.

Lincoln snapped off the recorder and hurried to the conference room. He wasn't optimistic that he was going to be able to come up with a solution, and he was certain that his senior officer staff wouldn't be much help. What worried him most were the Klingons. The Nixon was in bad shape. They might have had the ship fully repaired by Dr. Dehner, but since then, they'd been through a number of rough encounters, and hadn't been able to put in at a starbase for complete repairs since. Mr. Aphroodle might be adept at cannibalization and tricking others into doing the work or providing parts, but even he had his limits.

The doors to the conference room swished halfway open and then stuck. Lincoln attempted to squeeze his way through the gap, found he couldn't quite fit, and tried to force them open the rest of the way. They moved slightly, and then jammed.

"Sybok, if you don't mind," Lincoln said with mild frustration.

"No, captain, I don't mind, go right ahead." Sybok beamed vacuously from his seat.

"I meant that if you don't mind, I'd like for you to come over here and use your Vulcan strength to open this door." Lincoln tapped his forehead against the edge of the door in frustration.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Sybok rushed over to the doors and pried them wide open. There was the sound of metal grinding on metal and of components breaking. The left hand door dropped rapidly towards Lincoln, who flinched as it stopped just millimeters from his head.

Lincoln stepped through the doorway, turned back to look at it and asked, "Mr. Aphroodle? Any chance of getting that fixed?"

"No parts! No fix!" was the reply.

Lincoln sighed and moved to take his seat at the table. He was the last to arrive, Hatfield, the Chief Medical Officer, Cornrows Vageena Africa, Communications Officer, Osama Bin Hussein, Navigation, and Salvadore Chi-Chi, Helm, having gotten there before him, along with the others.

"Well, gentlemen," he paused, briefly, noticing the stinkeye that Cornrows was giving him. "And lady, I don't much relish the idea of us trying to have a conference here with the door stuck open, but I don't suppose we have any choice in the matter. Now, what are we going to do to try and fix this mess?"

"I don't see how's its any of our business to do anything. We's supposed to obey the Prime Directive and leaves these people alone!" Cornrows crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, her large bracelets clattering together as she did so.

"But there's Klingons!" Salvadore's voice squeaked with excitement. "I know they like to pretend to be the butch tough guy, but get them in the bedroom, and they're all 'Call me Mr. Slave!' I'm telling you!"

"And like everything a McCoy does," Hatfield drawled. "The medical reports are half-assed. There's a chemical analysis of a few dozen species of plants, but nothing about the millions of other plants on that planet. Not even any interviews with the local healers about what plants they use. And no samples of the Mugato venom. Why, for all we know, they could just be some of the natives dressed up in albino gorilla costumes, with horns and scales glued on the thing to make it look scary!"

"Look," Lincoln sighed. "The Prime Directive wasn't designed to cover situations like this. It says we're not supposed to interfere in the internal matters of a species not capable of warp drive. We have a planet, with a pre-literate society, I might add, which has one side being given military aid by the Klingons. Now, I don't know where Kirk gets his ideas from, but the Klingons are not simply going to walk away from this planet. We know that they came here once, gave the villagers flintlocks, modeled after Earthly designs and not Klingon, so clearly the Klingons are trying to frame the Federation, left, and then returned. I think that its safe to say that the Klingons are going to return at some point."

"It is the honorable thing to do." Hussein nodded.

"The Klingons don't care what happens to the inhabitants. If they manage to wipe themselves out, then the Klingons can move in and occupy this world easily. If the villagers become dominant, they'll remain puppets of the Klingons, if the Hill People gain the advantage, the Klingons can claim it was the Federation to blame for the mess, pointing to the Earth-like flintlocks as proof.

"Even if the Klingons do stay away," Lincoln continued. "These people are in trouble. They're an illiterate stone age people who've been given 17th Century Earth weapons, with no moral and ethical guidance about how to conduct their society. Whatever pacifist tendencies they may have once had, they've been subsumed by blood lust. How many years or decades will it be before they can return to their peaceful ways? In the meantime, if we do nothing to try and help these people, their blood will be on our hands."

"How Earth fix? How Vulcan fix?" Mr. Aphroodle sucked back drool as he spoke.

"Well, Kirk made a record of the weapons and the suspected presence of the Klingons." Sybok interjected.

"Which the Federation will no doubt use to harangue the Klingons with in diplomatic meetings, meanwhile the locals of this planet will continue to kill one another, and millions of people will continue to suffer from diseases that could be treated by compounds found in the plants on this world." Hatfield fumed.

"No! No! No!" Aphroodle stood up and pounded on the table. "Earth kill all the time, then one day stop! Vulcan kill all the time, then one day stop! How Earth fix? How Vulcan fix?"

"Well, in my case, it was an Orion slave girl with a Denebian tongue vibrator. Oooh, captain! Can we import some of those?"

"No, Sybok. Mr. Aphroodle, are you asking how Earth and Vulcan overcame their violent behaviors and became peaceful societies?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Aphroodle nodded vigorously.

"Well, on Earth we had people like Gandhi, Helen Keller, John Lennon, the Dalai Llama, and Cesar Chavez, all of whom advocated non-violence. And the Vulcans had Surak."

"Captain Lincoln!" the voice startled most of the people at the table. It was a woman's voice, with a proper British accent, but very, very cold. "Most of the time I'm content to speak in an assumed dialect because people find it hard to believe that this is my normal speaking voice, but not today, and not now! Need I remind you that some of the most powerful voices in the non-violent movement have been African-American?"

Cornrows was standing up, with her palms pressed down on the conference table, harpoons shooting out of her eyes. The rest of the table blanched away from her.

"Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, W. E. B. Du Bois, to name but three, and even Malcolm X was starting to come around to the idea when he was gunned down. If you're going to teach these people non-violence, then you'd better include the lessons from those Earthlings whose color is a bit darker than your own."

Cornrows sat down to an awkward silence. The rest of the staff embarrassedly drummed the table with their fingers and looked around in directions other than where Cornrows was seated.

"So, as I was saying," Lincoln broke the tension. "We have folks like Gandhi, and Lennon --"

"I'm gonna kill your white ass!"

"And, of course, Martin Luther King. But I don't know what that has to do with our current situation."

Aphroodle planted his forehead violently on the table.

"Captain stupid," he said. "Make it stop."

"What?" Lincoln was flummoxed by his Chief Engineer's behavior, but then again, that was to be expected, considering how stupid Pakleds were.

"Captain, I believe what Mr. Aphroodle is suggesting is that one of the things we should do, is give these people the collected philosophies of people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the others, so that they might be able to learn to work past their violent tendencies much faster." Chi Chi's voice had the tone of a teacher explaining something to a small child.

"Why?" Lincoln's face twisted up in puzzlement. "They can't read, so what good would it do them?"

"We teach them to read, dumb ass, I mean, sir!" Cornrows snapped after Chi Chi joined Aphroodle in planting his face on the table.

"Oh, I see," Lincoln drew the words out as he grasped what the others were telling him. "You're saying that if we teach them to read and give them works on the philosophy of non-violence, we might be able to enable them to return to the kind of peaceful existence they had before the Klingons showed up, is that it?"

"Yes!" The others shouted.

"Its worth a shot. Sybok, go through the ship's library, and print out copies of everything that you think will be necessary to accomplish this. Dismissed."

The officers got up from the table and made their way out of the conference room. As he reached the Turbolift, Lincoln was stopped by the doctor.

"Henry," Hatfield said. "I just had a thought. We don't know what these people are going to be like when we get down there, and this isn't going to be a short mission. Its going to take time to teach these people how to read, and I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't try to fix the shortcomings in McCoy's botanical study."

"Are you sure you want to do that, doctor? You know that they'll never let you have any of the credit for any discoveries that you might make. It'll all go to McCoy."

"Damn it, Henry, I'm a doctor, and my first duty is to save lives. McCoy might have forgotten how important that is, but I haven't. If we go down there and don't come back with a complete analysis of everything, I'll be betraying the oath I took as a doctor."

"All right, doctor. We'll stay as long as we can. Now what did you mean by 'We don't know what these people are going to be like'? I'm sure if we explain to Tyree, or his people that we're friends with Kirk, they'll be happy to see us."

"Will they?" The Turbolift arrived and both Lincoln and Hatfield stepped into it.

"Bridge," Lincoln gave a twist to the control handle. "Why shouldn't they be, doctor?"

"How do we know if Tyree's still alive? What if he was killed in a raid? Who do we talk to, then? Just as important, how do we keep ourselves from being killed by the villagers while we're down there?"

"We'll have our phasers with us, and we'll take plenty of security people along."

"In case you haven't noticed, captain," Hatfield's tone was dry. "This ship isn't exactly staffed with Starfleet's finest, and we're kind of running low on security personnel. They keep getting killed on away missions. It's like their uniform has a bullseye painted on it or something."

"So, what do you suggest we do, doctor? Beam down a communicator and some books, while we stay safely in the ship? And hope that the natives figure out how the communicator works and that they're willing to take reading lessons that way?"

"No, but suppose we used the ship's phasers to stun the Hill People and the villagers. We could then beam down, do a survey of the area, try to find out if Tyree's still alive, and then when they woke up, we could start teaching them."

"That's not a bad idea, doctor."

"Thank you, captain." Hatfield beamed. "I'm wondering about the Klingons. We've no idea if this was an operation officially sanctioned by the Klingon government, or if it was a power grab by a single Klingon captain in order to boost his status in the Empire."

Lincoln released the control handle, stunned. The Turbolift stopped.

"Doctor, you're right!" Lincoln began pacing in the Turbolift as he spoke. "Kirk never bothered to try and figure that out! If this is an organized plan by the Klingon Empire, then they'll attempt to counter anything we do. If we were to show up, give the natives non-violent philosophies, leave, and expect everything to be okay, we'd be no better than Kirk. Its only a balance of power if our efforts are the same as the Klingons. This complicates things. I'm not even sure what we should do now.

"Besides what we've already talked about, of course." Lincoln added, hastily, after noticing the look of concern on the doctor's face. "We can't stay here to guide these people to a civilized society, and we can't expect the Klingons to stay away from this planet. Starfleet's certainly not going to do much to help us in this matter. Our division doesn't officially exist, any reports we file are generally ignored, unless, of course, there's something in them which would make Starfleet look bad. Somehow, we have to checkmate the Klingons, using only a pawn, and doing it in a single move."

Lincoln grabbed the control handle, twisted it, and sagged against the side of the Turbolift as it started up again. His face was pale and furrowed as he thought. There had to be some kind of solution to this issue. What nagged Lincoln most about it, however, wasn't that he had no idea of what to do, but that if he failed to figure something out, Kirk would essentially have beaten him. After all the times Kirk had cribbed off Lincoln's work back at the Academy, to have Kirk come out ahead of him now, was just too much.

The Turbolift doors opened on the bridge, and Lincoln absentmindedly stepped out, Hatfield following behind him. He barely gave the crewman time to get out of the captain's chair before taking his seat. There were the standard status briefings as to their location and the status of the ship that the crew began reciting, and Lincoln waved an acknowledgment to, even though what they said didn't penetrate to his consciousness. Fleegman said something about them being just hours away from Neural, which meant that they had very little time to try and get a handle on all of this. Less time if the Klingons returned while they were on the planet.

It would be easy to deal with all of this if it turned out to be a rogue Klingon acting on his own initiative. Simply kill the Klingon captain, and odds are, the interference would stop, and there would be, a balance of power. If, however, this was a concerted effort by the Klingon Empire to extend their influence, then killing the Klingon captain would only delay them for a little while. Worse yet, the Klingons could be undertaking similar operations on any number of less advanced worlds. Within the Klingon Empire, this was no concern of the Federation, and there were vast stretches of space that the Klingons could explore that weren't considered Federation territory, so why pick this world to tamper with? Clearly something much larger was going on. Were the Klingons blocked from heading in the direction opposite the Federation? Why not head to the next spiral arm?

"Sybok to captain," the intercom chimed. Lincoln punched the button on the armrest of the captain's chair to answer, and had to quickly fumble to grab it as it fell off. He motioned to the crewman acting as Communications Officer to transfer the transmission over to the main bridge speakers.

"Yes, Sybok?" Lincoln vainly tried to force the armrest back into place as he spoke.

"Captain, I've run into a small problem."

"What's that?"

"The Neuralians don't have a written language, so not only do I have to research the appropriate materials, but I also have come up with a written language and a method of teaching it to them."

"Fuck it, Sybok, we'll just teach them English. They're probably going to be joining the Federation in a few years, and its bad enough I have to listen to 'Press 1 for Andorian, press 2 for Orionian,' and so on, every time I contact the Starfleet, I don't need another damn language added to the list. Takes me 30 minutes to get to English now."

"Roger, dodger, captain."

"Sybok!" Lincoln shouted, hoping to catch Sybok before he broke the connection.

"Yes, captain?"

"The doctor and I were talking after the meeting, and we realized that we've no idea if the Klingons supplying the Neuralians are a rogue element, or if they're acting under orders of the Klingon Empire. If they are under orders, then I don't know what good it'll do to follow through with our plans, or how we'll even be able to maintain the balance of power as Kirk intended."

"Hmm," There was a long pause before Sybok spoke again. "Logic would dictate that we're fucked. Is the doctor there?"

"I'm here, you pointy eared nutjob."

"Doctor, need I remind you that species slurs are a violation of Starfleet regulations?"

"I'm sorry, Sybok. You have to forgive me, I was born in the segregated South."

"Bullshit, you just like being an an asshole." The doctor made a face in response to Sybok calling him an asshole. "Now, do you have any Klingon aphrodisiacs?"

"Why?"

"Because this is turning out to be a suicide mission, and if I'm going to die, then I intend to plow the shit out of Nurse Basilica before beaming down to the planet."

The bridge erupted into laughter at this announcement. Lincoln glared at the crew who quickly turned back to their stations, trying to suppress snickers.

"Sybok, what you do with Nurse Basilica is your own business, but I'd appreciate it if before you, um, 'saddled up,' as it were, that you came up with some suggestions of what we should do if the Klingons are acting under orders from the Empire."

"My first suggestion would be to get the doctor to give you some of the aphrodisiacs as well, and start plowing Yeoman Paul, because I can't think of any way this is going to come out in our favor."

"Shut up!" Lincoln shouted at the bridge crew, who once again had burst into laughter, with several of them falling out of their chairs. "Sybok, I need answers! And dipping my dick isn't a useful one right now."

"I disagree, captain. Getting laid would do you a world of good, besides, its not like you know when you're going to get the chance again."

"Sybok!" Lincoln's voice was barely audible over the laughter.

"Very well, captain." There was the unmistakable sound of a heavy sigh. "I will attempt to sort this all out. How long until we're in orbit?"

Lincoln looked at the navigator, who wiped the tears from his eyes and checked his instruments.

"Seven hours, captain. Just enough time for you to roll Paul in flour and find the wet spot!"

Lincoln waited for the laughter to subside before he spoke. His voice was calm, but trembled slightly, from repressed emotion.

"Consider yourself on report, mister! As for the rest of you, if I hear anything out of you, you'll be joining him on report. Helm, increase speed to warp nine, and hold it there for as long as you can. We've wasted too much time as it is. We'll just have to hope that there's no Klingons in orbit of Neural when we get there. Doctor, my quarters."

"Captain, the increase in speed will complicate my plans." Sybok's voice was plaintive.

"Deal with it, Sybok. Lincoln out." Lincoln let the armrest fall and walked to the Turbolift, with Hatfield close behind.

Captain's Log: Stardate 4219.5 Just when I thought that we had everything worked out, the doctor and I realized that we have no idea how we're going to ensure that the Klingons don't continue to interfere with this world once we've accomplished our mission. Our hope is that once on the planet, we'll be able to find out some clue about the Klingon motives. If this is a rogue mission by a single Klingon captain, then destroying him and his ship should be enough. If not, we're going to have to find some way of making this world unpalatable to the Klingons, if the natives are going to have a chance of developing as a peaceful, independent society. For now, myself, Sybok, and Dr. Hatfield are beaming down to the planet to see what's happened since the Enterprise left.

Lincoln and the others entered the transporter room, ensign Fleegman and Tim were at the controls. As Hatfield and Sybok placed the equipment they would need for the mission on the back transporter pads, Lincoln stepped up to the control panel, and pushed the intercom button.

"Lincoln to bridge."

"Here, bridge." responded Aphroodle.

"Mr. Aphroodle, these native costumes you had made up for us are a bit uncomfortable. The crotch down where your nuts hang is a little too tight, they cut me, it's like riding a wire fence. I could use a little more room from the crotch back to my bunghole the next time you make something up for me."

"Yes, captain."

"Now, Aphroodle, you sure that the ship's phasers will only stun the natives?"

"No kill I."

"Okay, Mr. Aphroodle, fire the phasers on the coordinates for the Hill People and the villagers. Once we're down on the planet, maintain radio silence until we contact you to have the second wave of personnel beamed down. If the Klingons show up, get out of here, and don't come back until you're certain they're gone."

"Will a hundred years do?" Chi Chi's voice was faint in the background.

"I heard that, mister!"

"Phasers fired! People go sleepytown." Aphroodle interjected.

"Thank you!" Lincoln leapt to his transporter pad and nodded to Tim. "Energize."

They materialized in the center of the village, with phasers drawn, and flashlights blazing away in the night. Since the Klingons were affiliated with the village people, it made the most sense for the crew to inspect the village before moving on to the Hill People. They had no idea of how long it was going to take to estimate how many weapons the villagers had and how many people might be trained in their usage. It was also possible that there was a Klingon agent, and they would have a better chance of catching him if he was unconscious. If the Hill People awoke while Lincoln and the others were inspecting the camp, they could hopefully play off Tyree's friendship with Kirk, to prevent a major incident from developing.

Finding that Aphroodle had, indeed, gotten the settings right on the phasers, and that the villagers were unconscious, Lincoln, Hatfield, and Sybok gathered up their equipment.

"Where's the weapons stored?" Lincoln asked.

"Tricorder readings show what's most likely a forge in that building," Sybok said pointing to one of the buildings. "Kirk's report had the flintlock components being stored in a building with a forge, so I suggest we start there."

As they entered the building, they caught the odor of burning flesh and hair. Looking around, they spotted the smith, face down in the coals of his forge. He must have been working at it when the Nixon had fired her phasers. Hatfield raced over and pulled the man from the forge, but a quick scan with the Tricorder revealed him to be beyond the abilities of the doctor to save, Prime Directive or not.

"Mr. Aphroodle," Lincoln had flipped open his communicator once it had be ascertained there was nothing to be done for the smith. "Make a note that the next time we decide to stun an entire village that we first do a sensor scan to make sure no one will be killed unnecessarily."

"Aphroodle do."

"Lincoln out." He snapped the communicator shut and turned to face the others. "Now that I think about it, Sybok, you'd better make the note, as I have no idea what Aphroodle means by any of his log entries. Have you two managed to get an estimate of the number of weapons and how long it will be before the villagers are able to make their own without help from the Klingons?"

"There's several hundred here, either assembled or waiting to be put together. As for the villagers ability to make the weapons on their own, the Klingons have failed to teach them the concept of interchangeable parts or how to set up an assembly line. I would be very hesitant to fire a Neural made weapon." Sybok informed him.

"That's something, I suppose."

"Henry, I just had a thought. What if, instead of trying to teach these people non-violent conflict resolution, we simply took the weapons away from them?" Hatfield suggested.

"A nice idea, but it won't work." Sybok responded before Lincoln could answer. "The Neuralians know about guns, so even if we took them all, the natives would eventually figure out how to make their own. Plus, they no doubt have trading networks with other towns and villages and have exchanged flintlocks for other items with those people.

"Captain, these people do not have slavery as such, but women are not considered equals here, and I'm sure that at least a few brides have been traded for guns."

"Makes sense." Lincoln nodded.

"I know that it goes against Starfleet regulations," Sybok continued. "But since we're already violating several dozen of them, including the Prime Directive, I was wondering if I could trade some of our items for one of the local women. I doubt if they're as skilled as an Orion Slave Girl, but I could no doubt train one, and on the Nixon she would have a better life than she would have here."

"No, Sybok, you may not." Lincoln snapped. "Now, let's get on with the survey of the village. I want to get a look at the Hill People before they wake up."

The survey took them several hours as they went house to house, doing an inventory of the number of weapons which had been handed out. They found a couple of other unfortunates who'd been in positions which lead to their deaths when hit by the ship's phasers. More problematic, however, was Sybok's behavior when they stumbled upon a couple who'd been stunned in the middle of a sexual act. Sybok would attempt to adjust their positions in order to improve their experience, but Lincoln would veto the idea, since it would seem even more suspicious than the fact that several other people had seemingly inexplicably died in the middle of the night. He was finally able to convince Sybok to drop the matter when he pointed out that it might be traumatic for the village people to wake up in strange positions after becoming unconscious during sex, and this might give them sexual hang ups.

As they finished the survey, Lincoln checked the time on his communicator. Daylight was still several hours off, but the effects of the phasers would soon be wearing off. They might make it to where the Hill People lived before there was any danger of someone waking up, but it'd be impossible to complete the survey in time. After verifying that Hatfield didn't believe anyone would suffer ill effects from being stunned a second time, Lincoln and the others moved out of phaser range, and put in a call to the ship.

"Mr. Aphroodle," Lincoln said. "Please stun the villagers and the Hill People again. We're far enough away that we're in no danger of being hit."

"Ok," Lincoln could hear Aphroodle giving the necessary order, followed by someone on the bridge crew saying something to Aphroodle. "Captain, Klingons come in!"

It took Lincoln a moment to realize that Aphroodle was trying to tell him that a Klingon ship was approaching. What to do? They needed to find out if the Klingon Empire was behind this or not, but the Chief Engineer wasn't exactly qualified to deal with the Klingons on his own. He could beam back up to the ship, and deal with the Klingons personally, but that would mean they wouldn't be able to complete the survey, since he couldn't trust Sybok not to screw things up down here, and who knows when they'd have a chance at investigating the Klingons again, if they didn't do it now. There were no good options, no matter how he thought about it. Even sending the Nixon away might not work, since its possible that the Klingons had already picked the ship up on their long range sensors, and Pakleds were lumbering beasts, so expecting Aphroodle to be able to get the ship out of there undetected was a bit much, his earlier orders to Aphroodle notwithstanding.

"Aphroodle," Lincoln said at last. "I need you to prevent the Klingons from sending a landing party here until we're at least done with our survey."

"How stop?"

"I don't know, Mr. Aphroodle, I'm counting on you to think of something. Lincoln out." He snapped the lid to his communicator shut and turned to the others. "We'd better hurry, I'm not sure how much time we're going to have."

"Henry, are you sure that its such a good idea letting Aphroodle handle this?" Hatfield asked as they broke into a rapid jog.

"What choice do I have, doctor? We can't really abandon the survey, since we don't know what the Klingons will do in our absence, and if we beam back to the ship to confront the Klingons, we might not be able to get back here to try and help these people."

Chief Engineer's Log: Stardate 4220.2 Captain Lincoln, planet go. Aphroodle told to stop Klingons. Aphroodle think for hours. Aphroodle not have much hope, but know must captain obey.

"Yo, retard!" Aphroodle's entry was interrupted by Cornrows shout. "The Klingons are calling us, whatcha you wants me to do?"

"Screen on." Aphroodle hung his head in shame.

The image of captain Krell filled the screen, Aphroodle stood and alternated between awkwardly looking at the screen and staring at his feet. There was a unnerving pause as Krell took in the sight, then he began to laugh heartily.

"What's this? A Federation starship commanded by a Pakled? I see Starfleet has finally decided to put their best and brightest in command!"

Aphroodle shook in response to Krell's tone. Sweat formed on his forehead, and the times when he looked at the screen, he flashed a broken smile.

"Who are you?" Krell leaned forward and leered at the screen.

"Aphroodle."

"Well, Aphroodle, I am Captain Krell of the Klingon Imperial Cruiser Rotlh NaHlet, and by treaty, this world is off-limits to anyone but xenopologists. Clearly, you're not one of them, so why are you here? Is the Federation meddling in places they shouldn't be?"

"Our ship broken." Aphroodle's smile was fragile. "Make it go?"

Krell managed to keep from falling out of his chair as he convulsed with laughter, but only just barely.

"I just muted us so his pointy eyebrowed ass can't hear us," Cornrows was standing up and shouting at Aphroodle. "Now what the hell is your dumb ass going to do? I ain't fixin' to die 'cause you is stupid!"

Aphroodle turned to her and gestured for her to unmute the Klingon.

"I plan. We no die."

"What's the matter, Pakled?" Krell gasped between laughs. "Can't you control your woman?"

"She my bitch, she know."

"Aphroodle!" Cornrows was livid and had slipped back into her English accent. "If you don't give me a good reason to put up with your insults, I'm going to have no choice but to relieve you of command!"

"Mute?" Aphroodle turned to face her, while pointing to the screen.

"Yes, of course, I muted us."

"Captain said Klingon stop. We no can fight, our ship not strong. Must use smarts. Me have smarts, just talk dumb. You see. You, scared act."

Cornrows flinched and fell back on her controls, making sure to unmute them.

"Oh, lordy! Please don' beat me, massah Aphroodle!"

Krell spent a few more minutes laughing heartily.

"I guess she is your bitch, after all!" Krell wiped the tears from his eyes. "Now, tell me why I should help someone from the Federation."

"We make Kirk good."

"What?"

"Kirk, big fuck up. We fix. We make him look good. You fix ship, we tell you how stop Kirk."

"You're trying to tell me that Captain Kirk," Krell spat the name out. "Owes his reputation to a ship commanded by a Pakled?"

"True it."

The roar of laughter coming from the Rotlh NaHlet was deafening. It overloaded the comm system and all the crew of the Nixon heard for several minutes was digital distortion. Aphroodle stood unfazed by all of this, despite the confused stares from the rest of the bridge crew.

"You know, Pakled, I kind of like you. I might just spare your life and keep you as my jester."

"Proof, I have."

"Now you're claiming you can prove this?" Krell kept his laughter under a modicum of control. "Okay, Pakled, if you can prove this, I'll agree to your bargain."

"Bitch, Order Zero send!" Aphroodle snapped at Cornrows.

"Huh? Oh, okay." Cornrows complied, but wondered if she was doing the right thing. Order Zero was the highly classified order requiring them to follow behind Kirk and make sure nothing he did ever came back to bite him on the ass. Transmitting it to the Klingons would be a treasonous violation of regulations, but Aphroodle did seem to be smarter than he was generally given credit for. She would have to monitor outgoing communications from the Klingon ship, and if they tried to retransmit the order, she could jam the signal, but that would mean they would have no choice but to destroy the Klingon vessel. Was Aphroodle really planning to do that? If the ship was acting under Imperial orders, it could start another war with the Empire. How was Aphroodle planning on extracting them from this mess?

"The Pakled speaks the truth!" Krell shouted after he read the order. "Very well, my simpleton, I shall fulfill my end of the bargain. Expect our first team of engineers to beam aboard your ship in fifteen of your minutes. Krell, out."

"Surely you don't intend to help them?" Qlp asked.

"Of course not, you fool!" Krell spat on the navigator. "That ship is assigned to protect Kirk, we can't allow it to leave this system."

"So you mean to destroy it?"

"Later. But they have all of the Federation's codes stored in their computers, since they have to be able to intercept Kirk's transmissions to Starfleet. We capture that ship, and we will have those codes. I shall be promoted, and the Empire will be able to rid itself of the Federation's interference!"

"You are wise."

"I want our best strike team, in full armor, in the transporter room in seven tup!" Krell barked at the communications officer. "Its possible that the Pakled is smart enough to know what we intend to do to them, and will have the air pumped out of their transporter room, so we'll make sure our soldiers don't need air.

"Helm! Bring us in closer to their ship, and hold our position between them and deep space, I don't want them trying to make an escape. Train all weapons on their ship, but do not fire unless I give the order. I want those codes!"

As the viewscreen went dark, Aphroodle jumped from the captain's chair and vaulted himself over the bridge railing with surprising speed for someone of his bulk. The ensign at the Engineering station screamed at the sight of the Pakled's mass hurtling itself towards him, and dove out of the way.

"Beamer room!" Aphroodle shouted as he mashed the intercom button with his fist.

"I do not understand your request." the computer responded.

"Transporter room!" Cornrows interjected.

"Beamer room," Aphroodle repeated.

"Uh, this is Tim in the transporter room." The voice was hesitant.

"Go, now! And take air!"

"What?"

"He means get your ass out of there, and vent the room to vacuum." Cornrows had moved beside Aphroodle and was watching his fingers dance over the engineering controls far faster than she could have imagined was possible. She still had no idea of what Aphroodle was up to, but realized that he did, indeed, have a plan.

"Security!" Aphroodle mashed the intercom button again. He had no idea how long the Klingons would give them before they started beaming over to the Nixon, but he knew they would never give them the fifteen minutes they had been promised. He had no idea if his plan was going to work, it could get them all killed, and the reprogramming of the warp drive needed to accomplish it was going to take a considerable amount of the time they'd been alloted. He wouldn't even be able to run simulations of the changes if he finished early, because he was relying on their position relative to Neural's moon, and they would have to engage the engines the moment conditions were right.

"Security here."

"Two squads! Beamer room one! Suits! Big phasers! No go in! Now!"

"I don't understand, sir." Came the reply.

"He's telling you to send two squads in space suits, with phaser rifles, to the transporter room, but not to enter the room! And hurry it up, 'cause like your ass, we's fixin' to be covered in Klingons!"

"Oh God, we're going to die!" Fleegman's wail could be heard over the intercom.

"Aye, aye, sir!" the security officer who answered the intercom said and broke the connection.

"Sir," Hussein's voice was soft but insistent. "The Klingons have closed to less than four thousand kilometers."

Aphroodle nodded, but said nothing, his fingers furiously manipulating the controls. That would make things easier for him, hopefully the strain on the starboard nacelle wouldn't be so bad this way. They couldn't have much more time before the first Klingons beamed aboard. He didn't know what was going to happen when they materialized in vacuum, but he hoped that it would delay things long enough for them to reach the right point in their orbit. Otherwise, they were going to have to make another orbit, and he didn't relish the idea of holding off that Klingon ship for the nearly 90 minutes it took for them to go around Neural at this level. Setting up the macros to handle the controls was going to take nearly as long as the modifications to the warp drive formulas, but had to be done, since the operations required needed femtosecond timing in order for Aphroodle's plan to have any hope of succeeding.

The Klingons were energizing their transporters! Aphroodle checked the clock, it'd been only about 8 minutes since he'd spoken to Krell, so he was right not to take them at their word. How much longer until they'd reached the correct orbital position? Ten minutes. Could the security detail keep the Klingons in the transporter room that long? Would he get the macros done in time?

"Me, speakers." Aphroodle turned from the controls to look at Cornrows.

"You want me to put you on the ship's speakers?"

Aphroodle nodded and turned back to his console. Cornrows moved back to her station and pushed the switched to allow Aphroodle to be heard over the ship's public address system.

"This Aphroodle. You grab!" Aphroodle dropped to the floor and wedged himself under the engineering console as best as he was able. If they survived this, he was going to make sure all seats were bolted to the floor and had four point restraints. It was damned stupid for them to be flung all over the bridge whenever the inertial dampers failed.

"He means hold on motherfuckers, this shit's about to get crazy in here!" Cornrows shouted, and threw herself to the floor, wrapping her limbs around the bridge rail supports.

There were several tense moments, long enough for the crew to wonder if Aphroodle hadn't lost what little mind that he had. Cornrows considered relaxing her grip on the supports, when the lights went out. She wanted to ask herself what had caused that. Was it the Klingons, breaking out of the transporter room? Or was this all part of Aphroodle's plan? She didn't have the chance, however, as she nearly struggled to maintain her grip and stay conscious when the ship began to move. She could tell they were shifting into warp drive, and that Aphroodle had significantly cut the power to all the other systems in order to provide enough power for the engines. What was he planning? Going into warp this close to a planet was extremely dangerous, and they were at risk of dragging the Klingon ship with them, it being so close. Now it felt like they were spinning. It was getting harder for her to hold on, and nausea began to make itself known to her. She closed her eyes.

"What's happening?" Chi Chi shouted.

No one answered him. Even if they had been able to, the whine of the engines was loud enough to make it hard to hear anything else. Gradually, members of the bridge crew began to slip into unconsciousness and be flung from their anchor points. Eventually, they all ended up pressed against the bulkhead in a mass.

Dayton's Star Trek would never have "fuck" in the title.

Security Chief Goldsmith cut the connection after hearing Cornrows translation of Aphroodle's orders. If Klingons were coming, then shit was getting pretty bad, and they needed to break out the armored suits. They wouldn't do much against a direct hit from a disruptor, but would stop a Bat'leth, which the Klingons tended to prefer in close order combat.

"You heard 'em," he turned to face the security officers in the duty room. "Squads five and seven, get your armored suits and phaser rifles, then take up positions of concealment as close to the transporter room as you can get. Everybody else, get your gear ready and be prepared to move out if needed."

"I don't want to die!" Fleegman screamed.

"Jesus, Fleegman, shut the fuck up with that shit, would you? And stop pissing your pants, its degrading." Another officer shot back.

"But its Klingons!"

"So fucking what?" Goldsmith slammed Fleegman up against a locker, pressing a KaBar into Fleegman's neck, just enough to cause pain. "The Klingons like to rack up a lot of kills quickly, which means if one of them gets you, you won't have to suffer long. However, if you don't man up and do your job, I'll kill you. Slowly, painfully, and with lots of your own blood spilling out in the process. Do you understand me?"

Fleegman nodded.

"Good." Goldsmith stepped back from Fleegman, who fell immediately to the floor. "Now suit up, and when this is over, put in a transfer to some other department, because I'm tired of mopping your piss up every time you have to go on a mission."

Fleegman scrambled to his locker and began suiting up. Goldsmith began putting in calls to the cabin's of off-duty security officers. This wasn't a time to worry about over-kill. The Nixon was an obsolete piece of shit that couldn't hope to survive ship to ship combat with a Klingon vessel. Whatever method by which Aphroodle had managed to convince the Klingons to send personnel over offered them the best chance at survival. He assumed that transporter room was going to become hostile territory as the Klingons wouldn't dare risk intership beaming. Once they retook the transporter room, however, Goldsmith intended to beam over an armed photon torpedo.

With the Klingons intent on capturing the Nixon, they wouldn't have their shields up, and putting a torpedo inside their ship, even if it didn't destroy it, would create so much chaos as to even up the odds.

"Torpedo room," Goldsmith pressed the intercom button after alerting the last of the off-duty security personnel. "Get a team in suits, and have them take a torp a corridor down from the transporter room. Make sure they stay well behind the security squads in the section and they're to remain hidden until after we've retaken the transporter room."

"Why, sir?" The tech on the other end asked.

"Because, once we regain the transporter room, I want you to arm that torp and beam it over to the Klingon ship. Its our best shot against the bastards."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Goldman stepped to the computer terminal in front of the security monitors and began pulling up the camera views from both outside and inside of the transporter room. The room itself was empty, and he could see Tim in the corridor at the atmosphere controls for the transporter room. Did Aphroodle think to order them to exhaust the room? Damned clever of the Pakled, if so. The system wouldn't allow the doors to open until the air was restored, and the controls could be locked from the outside. It wouldn't stop the Klingons, of course, but it would slow them down, and hopefully make them easy pickings for the squads now concealed outside the room.

"Fleegman!" Was it the squad leader calling his name? He didn't know. It was hard to tell with everyone dressed in suits that made them look like electric razors. Why did they make the suits look like that? There should be insignias on the outside of them so you could tell who was who, like the knights in armor with their shields.

"Fleegman!" Whomever it was that was yelling at him was standing directly in front of him now. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Stop standing there filling your piss bag, and get that phaser rifle set up in the corridor!"

Fleegman jerked involuntarily, since he had no idea how the man knew what he was doing. He fumbled into the corridor and spent several moments fumbling with the tripod for the phaser rifle before managing to get it set up. He then began moving around behind it agitatedly. He was nervous, and his urine bag was nearly full, and the weight of it on one leg only served to aggravate him more.

"Fleegman, I swear to god, if you don't hold your position behind that rifle, I'm going to burn your ass where you stand!"

Fleegman quickly shifted back behind the rifle, and tried to keep from fidgeting. He didn't understand any of this. He'd never asked to be in Section 7G, he hadn't even wanted to join Starfleet. That was his father's idea. It being a family tradition and all that. Fleegman just wanted to be a lumberjack, but his father said that there weren't any more lumberjacks, and that Fleegmans look silly in flannel, so he had no choice. When he flunked out of the Academy the first time, his father had made some calls, and Fleegman found himself assigned to Section 7G. He tried to put in his resignation, but was told that the only way one gets out of 7G was to reach retirement age or die.

"They're beaming in!" Someone holding a Tricorder shouted. "Get ready!"

There was no sound. Fleegman hated that. There should have been some kind of noise. They should have been able to know that the Klingons were materializing. Instead, there was nothing. Not even the red alert klaxon. How long would it take? Would the Klingons blast the doors open and charge right out?

"Here's what I want," it sounded like the squad leader speaking. "If the Klingons blow the door, I want you sweep the opening and at least a meter on either side of it with your weapons. If the Klingons cut through the walls, I want you to sweep the area of the cut for at least a meter on all sides. We do that, and we stand a good chance of holding them here. Don't wait for an order, just fire as soon as you see something!"

"Sir!" the voice came from whomever it was that was holding the Tricorder. "I'm picking up readings that the Klingons are cutting through the floor of the transporter room! They're trying to get to the next deck!"

"Shit! Get that door open, now!"

As a suited figure approached the controls, the sound of Aphroodle came over the ship's speakers. He was ordering them to hold on. Fleegman looked around for something to grab, when he found himself falling towards a bulkhead. The impact was cushioned by his suit, but the shock caused him to gasp. Then the gee forces began to build and consciousness slipped from him.

Hatfield stepped from the final Hill People tent that he had to inspect. Looking up at the sky, he noticed that it would be soon time for the planet's moon to set. The Hill People would soon be waking up, and doing whatever it is that primitive societies do when they wake up. Hatfield realized that he had something in common with those who'd soon be waking, as his bladder was making itself known. Moving away from the camp proper, he found a tree, unvelcro'd his pants and began relieving himself while looking at Neural's moon. It appeared to be roughly the same size as the Earth's, though without the same features, and seemingly more smooth.

A brilliant white light suddenly formed on the moon's surface, spreading itself upwards and outwards, like a flower blooming. Hatfield stared at it for a moment, and then realized that it could only mean something very large could have hit the moon. It was possible that it was an asteroid, but it could also have something to do with the Klingons showing up. One side of the "flower" began to stretch itself across the face of the moon, heading towards the terminus and the light was growing brighter. If it was an asteroid, it was a damned big one.

"Henry!" he shouted. "You'd better come see this!"

Lincoln angrily opened the flap to the tent he was in, prepared to chastise Hatfield for shouting. While it was unlikely that any of the Hill People would be awoken by the noise, it didn't do to take any chances. Knowing Aphroodle, he'd not set the phasers correctly, and the Hill People would wake up early.

"Doctor, keep your voice down!" he hissed loudly.

"Henry, look at the moon!"

The "flower" had started to fade in spots, but portions of the moon were glowing red, where the portions of the "flower" had retreated from.

"Shit." was all Lincoln could manage. The kind of energies required to create something like that on the moon were very high. Perhaps Aphroodle had fired on the Klingons and missed, hitting the moon instead. Or, as seemed more likely, given how simpleminded the Pakled seemed, he'd managed to crash the ship into the moon. "Sybok! Out here, now!"

"Yes, captain?" Sybok emerged from one of the tents with a smirk on his face.

"Sybok, best guess as to what's happening Neural's moon."

"Whoa," came the reply. "That's some pretty wicked shit."

"You don't suppose that Tricorder of yours would tell us anything about what's going on up there, do you?" Hatfield's voice was dry.

"I forgot all about it." there's was a decidedly embarrassed tone to Sybok's voice as he held it aloft in front of him and began to take readings. "The type of radiation I'm picking up seems to be consistent with that produced by a warp core breach. Somebody seriously got fucked, it looks like."

"That 'somebody' might be us." Lincoln snapped. "Can you tell if it was our ship or the Klingon's that blew up?"

"I'm afraid not, captain." Sybok's tone was a bit more subdued. "At this distance, and with only the limited range of the Tricorder, all I can say for sure is that it was a starship that impacted with the moon."

"Lincoln to Nixon!" He'd flipped open his communicator and called desperately to the ship. "Mr. Aphroodle! What have you done to my ship? Aphroodle! Answer me!"

There was the sound of a ratcheting click. Lincoln and the others froze.

"Captain, I believe we have more immediate matters of a pressing nature." Hatfield's voice was calm and even, though Lincoln tell there was a slight nervousness to it.

Turning slowly around, they saw the Hill People arrayed behind them, pointing flintlocks in their direction. Lincoln and the others raised their hands, hoping that the Hill People would recognize it as a sign that they intended no harm. Lincoln scanned the faces of the Hill People, hoping desperately that he'd be able to find some indication of which one of them might be Tyree. If they could find him, and talk to him, they might have a chance.

"Hello," Lincoln tried to keep his voice calm. "I'm looking for a man called Tyree. We're friends of Jim Kirk. We've come here to try and help you."

"Help?" A wounded man hobbled out of the shadows and into the moonlight. "With more thundersticks? Or those small boxes that kill with light? I don't know if giving us either of those will help. All we Hill People do these days is kill villagers, and burying those of our own kind that the villagers have killed."

"Are you Tyree?" Lincoln asked.

"I am." came the reply. "And I am not sure I should trust you, friend of Kirk or not. We have become killers, and I admit that I once enjoyed the killing. I saw it as a way to avenge my wife's death, now, I am not sure that it is better than our old ways. The children do not play as they once did, but must hide, because if the villagers see them, they will kill them."

"You have my sympathies." Lincoln hoped that his tone would allow him to at least convince Tyree that they were friends. If that was the Nixon that got pasted all over the moon, they were going to be trapped on this planet for the rest of their lives. "Our own people have gone through similar turbulent times, but we have managed to work through them and become peaceful. Jim Kirk gave you the thundersticks to try and keep you safe until we could arrive. We bring you many things, even a kind of magic which can help you live peacefully with the village people once more."

Lincoln hated having to be so overtly supportive of Kirk, but it seemed to be the best way of gaining Tyree's trust. It might not be so effective, now that Tyree had gotten over his bloodlust, but Lincoln wasn't so sure of what other tack to take at the moment. At the very least, it seemed to be keeping them alive, which meant that there was hope.

"What kind of magic?" Tyree came closer. "Magic that kills? Like the thundersticks? When I first met Kirk, he said nothing about thundersticks, then when he came back, he knew all about them. He said nothing about magic, now you tell me about magic. You are a strange people. You know of many things, but pretend to be stupid. You come from the lights in the sky, you are not of us.

"How can I trust you? This time you say you come to give us magic, but what of the other things that you know? Will you hold them back from us, and then one day show up, only to offer us more things? And what of the village people? Their friends, the dark skinned ones, gave them thundersticks, but you did not, even though you were here first. Speak to me, friend of Kirk. Tell me why I should trust you now. But know this, if I do not like your answer, my men will kill you, magic or not."

"Please, you have to understand, Kirk was only obeying our customs." As Lincoln said it, he realized how much it sounded like the old excuse of only following orders. "In our travels, we have found that it is better if we do not interfere in the lives of other people. When Kirk came here the first time, it was only to learn from your people. Unfortunately, the Klingons, those you call 'the dark skinned ones,' do not share our customs. They gave the thundersticks to the village people in order that they might rule over your people. I promise you that we will hold no secrets from you. We will give you the magic we have brought with us and we will hold no secrets back from you."

"And what does this magic do?"

Lincoln started to respond and then stopped. How the hell does one explain writing to a pre-literate people? "Talking book" doesn't make any sense to them, since they've no idea what a book even is. Nor would telling them that it was a method of communicating knowledge over the years work for them, since, as a society based on oral traditions, they'd have no idea that such things change over a long period of time. Still, it was probably one of the most important developments in the history of any civilization, save the invention of deodorant by Jatravartids.

"This magic," Sybok leapt in to cover Lincoln's silence. "Is the key to everything our people have accomplished. Not only does it hold our most sacred truths, but it helps us control who can understand them."

"And with this magic we will learn all your secrets?"

"In time." Lincoln realized he should probably take the conversation back from Sybok, as Sybok was liable to start babbling about Orion slave girls again. "There is much to learn, and no one of us knows all of them. I can promise you, however, that the secrets we give you will enable you to return your world to the peaceful place you once knew."

"Do the dark skinned ones know these secrets?"

"Some of them, but their customs are different than ours."

"Why have you not taught them these secrets?"

"Our people have an old saying, 'You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.' We have tried to teach the Klingons, the dark skinned ones,". Lincoln hastily corrected himself. "But they do not wish to learn."

"What's a horse?" Tyree was puzzled.

"They're a kind of animal that you ride, to get around faster."

This was met with blank stares.

"You don't have beasts of burden?"

"Beasts are for eating." Tyree's answer was matter-of-fact.

"Ok," Lincoln's arms were getting tired. "The point is that just because you offer something to someone, doesn't mean that they'll accept the gift. If you'll put down your weapons, and allow Sybok to get some of the things we brought with us, we can begin teaching you."

"I do not know." Tyree's face was troubled. "The dark skinned ones brought the thundersticks, and death came to us. Jim Kirk also gave us thundersticks, because I was upset over the death of my wife, and now there is more death. You say you are a friend to Kirk and that you bring us the secrets of your people so that we may end the death. How can I believe you?"

"One of our great leaders once said, 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.' Are those the words of a man who is interested in killing?"

"Those are wise words." Tyree answered after contemplating them for a few moments. "I will allow you to get your things. Lower your weapons."

Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief as he dropped his arms. They would get to live a little longer. He didn't relish the idea of being trapped on this planet, but there was always the possibility of capturing the Klingon ship. If they could somehow take control of that and turn it over to the Federation, that would be a huge coup. They might even get transferred out of Section 7G as a reward.

"Sybok, if Tyree will grant you some help," Lincoln looked quizzically at Tyree, who nodded his assent. "Please take a few of these gentlemen with you and get the items we brought with us."

Tyree gestured at two of his men to go with Sybok, and the three of them set off to where Lincoln and the others had left the books. Lincoln allowed himself a smile. It wasn't a perfect solution, and he was going to have to figure out how to capture a Klingon ship with over 400 people on it, if they were to have any hope of getting off this world. Still, it beat having a lead ball lodged in some part of his vitals.

"Now," Tyree looked carefully at Lincoln. "Suppose you tell me more about this great leader of yours."

"Uh," Lincoln fumbled. The quote he'd given was about the only thing he knew about Martin Luther King, Jr. and not knowing what all Sybok had compiled about the man, he was hesitant to try and say much more, for fear of getting something wrong. "I'll be happy to, but it looks like you're in a lot of pain. Why don't we wait until Dr. Hatfield here has had a chance to look at your wounds. He has knowledge unknown to even your greatest healers."

Captain's Log: Stardate 4, shit, I don't know. I think its been about three days since the explosion on the moon. All I know is after Sybok showed up with the books, I decided I'd get some local tail. Bitch jabbed me in the arm with some kind of plant, next thing I know, my dick's hard as a rock, and I'm jack hammering away at a tent pole. Doc says he doesn't think that there'll be any permanent damage, and he's managed to get all the splinters out, but this turn of events is not what I expected. Anyway, we're teaching the Hill People how to read. I suppose that we're making some kind of progress, but how the hell can you tell after just a few days. Still no word from the Nixon and no sign of the Klingons. I'm hoping that instead of Aphroodle managing to get my ship blown up, he also, somehow, took the Klingons out with him.

Sybok, when he's not busy trying to teach the Hill People how to read, is attempting to construct a communications beacon in hopes that we might be able to contact Starfleet and secure a rescue. So far, he doesn't seem to be having much luck. He claims that the problem lies in the fact that the natives have yet to invent something called a "Speak & Spell." Whatever that is.

Lincoln snapped shut Sybok's Tricorder that he was using to record his log, and stepped out of the tent. He ignored the laughs and giggles coming from the native women and children that was directed at him. They might think him a fool, but he was certain that they would forget that in time. If not, there were always the village people. No doubt he'd be able to get one of their women to offer up herself after he bribed the village elders with something that Sybok had brought down with them. In the meantime, he was going to see what kind of progress they were making at teaching the natives.

Hatfield was with the Hill People's medicine man and the two of them were stirring a cast iron pot sitting over a fire. The medicine man had a troubled look on his face as he stared at the pot. The doctor, however, seemed to be at his wit's end. What kind of problem could he be having, Lincoln wondered. The two of them had a common interest, that of healing the sick, and unlike Sybok, Hatfield was well adjusted, so they should be getting along just fine. As he approached, he began to hear some of their conversation.

"I do not understand why we should boil the things." the medicine man said.

"You remember my saying that there are small creatures living on everything?"

"Yes, of course. I am not a stupid man, doctor."

"We boil the things in order to kill the small creatures so that they don't make our patients sick when we treat them."

"I am supposed to save lives, not take lives."

"You eat meat, don't you?" Hatfield's tone was frustrated.

"Yes, but that is different. When we go on hunts, we find the animal who offers himself to us, and then, after we kill him, and as we're eating him, we thank him for his sacrifice. We don't just cook him."

"Henry!" Hatfield exclaimed excitedly as he saw Lincoln approach. "I was just trying to explain to my friend --"

"Tunare," the medicine man interjected quickly.

"Tunare," Hatfield continued with an appreciative nod. "About the need to sterilize before performing surgery."

"I heard, doctor, and it is perhaps the most important thing you can do, as I understand it. Billions of people are alive today because of it."

"Exactly!" Hatfield nodded excitedly. "And as a healer, my first duty is to protect the health of my patient. Wouldn't you agree, Tunare?"

"Yes," Tunare nodded. "But one must always remember Eh-neeek-chock."

"What's that?" Lincoln had skimmed Kirk's original report from thirteen years ago, but it had mentioned nothing about Eh-neeek-chock.

"Eh-neeek-chock means that if you do harm to others, you can expect harm to be done to you."

"That sounds very much like our idea of karma." Lincoln replied.

"Captain, doctor, may I speak with you a moment?"

They hadn't noticed the appearance of Sybok and were caught off-guard.

"Certainly, Sybok." Lincoln inclined his head towards Tunare to apologize for having to leave. Tunare nodded his understanding.

"Captain, I've been thinking," Sybok said after they had moved out of earshot.

"That'll be a first." Hatfield snorted and turned his head aside.

"Really, doctor, I find your continued use of insults directed towards me distasteful, and if you persist in them, I will have no choice but to report you to Starfleet when we next are able to contact them."

"You sound like your brother."

"Doctor, I may have rejected the Vulcan philosophy of 'All Logic, All the Time,' but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize the value in being able to function logically when the situation demands it. Were I to allow my emotional side to have control of the situation, I'd have beaten you to a pulp by now, and would no doubt be court martialed by Starfleet."

"Gentlemen!" Lincoln snapped. "While I might personally wish the two of you would fuck each other and get it over with, we have a job to do on this planet, and your arguing with one another doesn't do anything to get us closer to our goal. We have no idea of when, or if we're going to be rescued, or what the Klingons are up to. And if we don't get the natives to play nice with one another, there's a good chance one of us could wind up with a lead ball in a vital organ! And while I'm sure the good doctor would do everything he could to save us, we're stuck dealing with societies that haven't even learned to read, let alone have things like blood banks. Now, the two of you behave, or I swear to god I'm going to jab the two of you with the same plant I got jabbed with and lock you guys in a cave so you can express your love for one another."

"Uh, captain," Sybok raised a finger, but Lincoln cut him off before he could continue.

"Sybok, if this is about the regulations on fraternization between officers, or anything else other than the situation of dealing with the natives here, let me just say that I fully intend to record the two of you fucking like bunnies and will have no compunction about posting it to Fleetbook. Understand?"

"Perfectly, captain."

"I'm sorry, Henry."

"Good." Lincoln put his hands on his hips and looked smug as he glanced from one to the other. "Now, Sybok, what was it you brought us here for?"

"Captain, I just realized that there's a much larger issue in dealing with a society as primitive as theirs that we hadn't thought of."

"And that is?"

"Disease."

"Well, Sybok, that was one of the things I was trying to explain to these people when you showed up." Hatfield's tone was one of restrained anger.

"Yes, doctor, and that may be a problem."

"Are you saying I'm incompetent?" Hatfield moved closer to Sybok in a threatening manner.

"Of course not, doctor, and that's the problem."

"What do you mean?" Lincoln held his palm in the direction of Hatfield in an effort to control the doctor's emotions.

"On Earth, as well as every other planet we've encountered," Sybok ignored the implied threat from Hatfield's body movements. "Every society has had to deal with pandemics of one sort or another millennia before those societies discovered the microorganisms that caused them. While those organisms did kill billions of people, they did ensure that those who survived had much stronger immune systems. That meant that the succeeding generations had much stronger immune systems than those who came before them. If we teach them proper sanitary procedures now, we might be enabling them to be susceptible to diseases even our most advanced sciences cannot cure, and in turn, weakening their species."

"That is a problem." Lincoln planned to ask Sybok and Hatfield what they thought they should do, when he was cut short by a beep from his communicator.

"Did you ever get your beacon made, Sybok?" There was more curiosity than mockery in the doctor's voice.

"Not yet."

"Lincoln here." He ignored the other two, for fear if he paid attention to their discussion, they'd resume bickering again, and answered his communicator.

"Captain," came the unmistakable voice over the communicator. "Here, Aphroodle."

Chief Engineer's Log: Stardate 4221.5 Aphroodle's plan seem work. Make big warp bubble on starboard side. It capture Klingon ship, fling Klingon ship on moon. Now have to see if all Klingons dead.

Aphroodle gently pushed off the recorder button on the dangling armrest of the captain's chair. He stood up from his crouched position on the floor and looked around at the bridge and its crew. Control panel covers were scattered about. Why didn't they have them secured with wires so things like this wouldn't happen? And he was really going to have to do something about the lack of seat belts on board the ship. People could get seriously hurt flying around all the time. The stupid "passive laser restraint" system that Starfleet was so fond of, clearly didn't do jack.

"Cornrows! All decks, damage?"

"Everything seems to be relatively minor. Aw, shits! We gots Klingons running around!"

"How?"

"The bastards cut through the floor of the transporter room into the deck below. They's carving up the floor buffing crew like nobody's business from the sounds of it."

"Security, send!"

"You gots it!"

"Fleegman!"

He didn't know how he was able to hear his name being shouted over all the noise around him. Normally, he wouldn't be able to hear any environmental sounds, but with his helmet on the deck, bone conduction enabled him to pick up the ambient noise, which had to be deafening to anyone not in a suit. Instead of responding, he just feigned unconsciousness. Surely if things were as bad as they sounded, they'd have to give up on trying to wake him up.

"Fleegman! I know you're awake!" the voice shouting at him was the squad leader. "I can see your vitals on the suit monitor and it says that you're awake, so get the fuck up!"

"Ok." Fleegman opened his eyes and got reluctantly to his feet.

"My god, man! You've got piss on the outside of your suit! How did you manage that?"

"I must have filled my urine bag, sir."

"You also didn't seal your suit properly, otherwise it'd all be on the inside! Now get your phaser rifle and follow the others through that door!" The squad leader pointed to the open transporter room door. "The god damned Klingons have cut through the floor and are busy killing the floor buffers!"

"But I could get killed!"

"That's kind of what I'm hoping for, dickweed! Now, get your ass in gear, or I'll phaser your ass right now!"

"You can't do that!" Fleegman was indignant.

"Bullshit, mister." The squad leader leveled his hand phaser at Fleegman. "We're in a combat situation, and regulations clearly state that if I think your actions put the rest of the squad in danger, I am authorized to use any and all means necessary to protect the rest of the squad. Right now, I'm not seeing why your life is more valuable than that of the guys who run the floor buffers, and since nobody at Starfleet gives a shit about Section 7G unless we fuck up and make them look bad, I don't think they're going to mind if you eat some high energy particles."

Fleegman screamed and threw himself down the corridor at the phaser rifle, he grabbed it, rolled to his feet, and ran towards the transporter room. Any thoughts he might have had about fleeing were erased by the occasional phaser blasts the squad leader fired in his general direction. It wasn't until he crossed the threshold of the transporter room door that he had second thoughts about how he was following orders. He'd assumed that the Klingons had cut their hole directly in front of the transporter pads. Instead, realizing that this might render the transporter inoperable, they'd cut their hole in front of the door. A fact Fleegman didn't discover until he was falling through the hole, screaming as loud as he possibly could.

He landed face first on top of his rifle, knocking the wind out of himself. A moment later, he felt the thud of someone landing beside him. As he lay gasping for breath, he felt whomever it was that had followed him down the hole grab his suit and flip him over.

"Ah, you've only had the wind knocked out of you." It was the squad leader. "I suppose you've pissed yourself again."

Fleegman shook his head to indicate that he hadn't.

"Alright, on your feet, then."

Fleegman was abruptly jerked to his feet and then roughly tossed into the arms of another member of the squad. Fleegman clung feebly to whomever it was, desperately trying to refill his lungs. Over the shoulder of his squad mate, he could see ample signs of the Klingons' handiwork. Being unfamiliar with the design of the ship, they had promptly begun cutting their way through all four walls in order to find the one which offered the best means of escape. Or had they?

As Fleegman got his wind back, he began to try to think about things from the Klingons perspective. Clearly, they had to know that they were going to be beaming into potentially hostile territory, and finding the transporter room abandoned, with no atmosphere, would have confirmed this. Their next step would have been to find a way out of the transporter room that posed the least risk to their safety. The Klingons might not have a problem with dying in battle, but they weren't stupid. They had to know that going through transporter room door would be the easiest way to get shot. Thus they cut through the floor into the deck below, killing anyone unfortunate to be below them. At that point, they'd want to take a path which offered them the least chance of getting killed, but enabled them to inflict the most damage upon the ship. Presumably, they wanted to gain control of the ship and expected that once it was discovered they were going through the floor, security teams would be sent to the deck they were now on.

So, the real question was: Would the Klingons have split up once they got to this deck? Certainly, they couldn't have known that the Nixon was going to undertake such wild evasive maneuvers to escape the Klingon ship and that everyone was going to be knocked out for a time. They also would have expected re-enforcements to arrive shortly after they beamed over. Given that the Klingons would have expected the most obvious line of attack to come from the door into the compartment they were now in, that would have been the least likely way to go. Now, could Fleegman convince the squad leader to let him take that path? If he could, then that would enable him to avoid a chance encounter with the Klingons, and thus avoid getting killed unnecessarily.

"Sir!" Fleegman snapped to attention once he gained his breath, and faced his squad leader who was examining the holes the Klingons had cut in the bulkheads.

"What is it, Fleegman? You want your mommy?"

"No sir! I was just thinking that if I were in the Klingons shoes when I beamed over, I'd split my team up and go in as many directions as possible in order to inflict the most damage, especially if I were expecting follow up teams to come behind me to provide support."

"Oh, you want to stay behind in case any more Klingons beam over?"

"No sir! I don't know what Aphroodle did, but I think its a safe bet that we won't see any more Klingons beaming over for some time. I was thinking that our best bet at stopping the Klingons was to split up and send teams down each one of the paths the Klingons cut, rather than trying to figure out which one they might have taken, assuming they all went the same direction."

"Fleegman, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Too much sense for you to have come up with it and not be planning on it keeping you out of combat."

"Uh, thank you, sir?"

"So, here's what we're going to do. I don't like the idea of splitting the squad into teams and having you putting a decent man in jeopardy. You get to go out there alone." The squad leader turned to face the other members. "My squad! Break up into three man teams, then start going through the holes the Klingons have cut in the bulkheads. I'll stay here and advise squad seven what we're up to when they drop through. Fleegman, you take the corridor and head aft. Maybe you'll get lucky and find the re-enforcements Goldsmith should have coming. Move out!

Fleegman started to scream.

"You heard me, Fleegman! Now, move it! Move it!"

Fleegman kept screaming as he dashed out into the corridor. Maybe he could run fast enough to reach the Turbolift at the far end before the Klingons spotted him. The squad leader didn't say what Fleegman was supposed to do when he got to the end, so there was no reason that Fleegman couldn't take the Turbolift and go back to his quarters in order to hide until all this blew over. To Fleegman's mind, the old saw about a coward dying a thousand deaths proved that it was better to be the coward. After all, emotional humiliation was nothing new for him, so to have it happen a thousand times was slightly less than what he experienced on shore leave.

About a quarter of the way to the Turbolift, he realized it'd be a good idea if he looked from side to side to make sure that the Klingons weren't coming out of one of the compartments or connecting corridors. By this time, he was breathing so hard he couldn't hear his suit radio. There were just the sounds of his gasping and the blood pounding in his ears.

"You can make it!" He wheezed to himself as he ran. "You can make it!"

Ahead of him, he could see panicked crew members peering out of their cabins as he ran towards, and then past them. Thankfully, none of them could identify him through his helmet, so he wouldn't have to worry about facing their accusations later on.

Halfway to the Turbolift, the corridor went dark, save for the rhythmic light given off by the red alert signals. Fleegman stopped, nearly tumbling over his feet. Had the Klingons cut the main plasma conduit? Or had someone from one of the squads killed the lights in order to make it harder for the Klingons to make their way through the ship? If the plasma conduit had been cut, then the Turbolift was probably out of order on this deck. Fleegman certainly couldn't hope to pry open the doors, and if he cut them open, then the safety features of the Turbolifts would prevent it from leaving the deck until the damage was repaired. Twirling in panic, he tried to think of what to do.

"What's happening?" He heard himself shouting. "Why're the lights out?"

"The Klingons cut a power conduit!" A voice in his ear said.

Something was moving in the shadows near him, visible during the flashes from the alert signal. What was it? He couldn't tell. If it was a Klingon, why didn't he strike? If it was someone from another squad, or one of his fellow crewmen, why were they obviously trying to hide?

"Sir!" Fleegman winced at how high pitched his voice sounded. "I think I found a Klingon!"

"Ok, Fleegman." For once, Fleegman found his squad leader's voice comforting. "Where are you?"

"I don't really know, sir. I think I'm at around junction N, as in Norman, in the main corridor."

"Stay calm, I've got back up headed your way. Make sure your phaser rifle is set to stun. I want to try and take at least one of these bastards alive."

"It is, sir."

"Good, when you think you've got a clear shot, I want you to take it."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Fleegman turned back to where he saw the shadowy figure moving, rifle at the ready. He caught a glimpse of the figure moving and fired his phaser rifle in the general direction. And then began screaming as portions of the bulkhead began to vaporize. Instead of removing his finger from the trigger, he panicked, pressed the trigger harder, and began to sweep the area erratically. The beam cut a jagged path and the mysterious figure got to tis feet and started to run in the opposite direction Fleegman had come down the corridor, before Fleegman's beam amputated its feet.

The figure fell to the floor and Fleegman continued to sweep around, unable to calm himself. As he neared completing his second circuit, he caught a bright flash out of the corner of his eye. The next thing he knew, he was laying on his back, body twisted in an uncomfortable position, staring up at the roof of the corridor. He no longer felt the phaser rifle in his hands. A figure in a Starfleet spacesuit appeared in his field of vision.

"Christ, Fleegman," a voice in his ear said. "You're almost as bad as the fucking Klingons. We had to stun your ass or you'd have killed us all. You're lucky that the only person you shot was a Klingon. I thought you said your weapon wasn't set to kill."

"I thought I had it on stun."

"Obviously not." The figure twisted a knob on the front of his suit, and Fleegman realized that he was tuning his comm unit to the squad's frequency. "Its okay, folks. Fleegman's been disarmed. You can all come out now."

Fleegman felt himself being pulled to his feet by whomever the suited figure was and he realized that someone must have gotten the lights working while he was unconscious as he could see the corridor clearly. It was hard to believe that being stunned by a phaser could so scramble his circuits that he wouldn't recognize something so obvious as the corridor no longer being in darkness, yet the fact that it took him being standing up before he noticed it was proof enough.

The figure propped Fleegman up against a bulkhead, and then twisted a knob on the front of his suit again.

"Goldsmith to bridge." The figure had pulled off his helmet and Fleegman could see that it was the Security Chief.

"This be the bridge." Cornrows' voice was in Fleegman's ear, telling him that Goldsmith had patched everyone into Goldsmith's comm unit.

"You can cancel the Red Alert. All six Klingons accounted for."

"Alive, dead?" Aphroodle asked.

"Four dead, one currently unconscious and one wounded, thanks to Fleegman."

"How damage?"

"It looks pretty bad, and we're going to need as many medical teams as you can send."

"Roger." Aphroodle delicately pushed one button on the captain's chair armrest before pushing another. "Doctors to the floor buffer deck. Repair crews same."

Aphroodle stepped away from the captain's chair and approached the helm and navigation console. Hussein and Chi-Chi were seated at their stations, running system checks.

"We, where?"

"I'm not entirely sure, Mr. Aphroodle." Hussein replied, seemingly stabbing buttons at random. It looks like we're about a half a light from Neural. After I've had a few minutes to make sure everything's working I can get a better fix on our location."

"Sensors, Klingon watch, and find broken ship."

"What?" The ensign manning the sensor's console asked.

"He means," there was a distinct nasal quality to Cornrows tone as she spoke. "Keep a look outs for anys Klingons that mights show up and sees if you cans find the wreckage of the Klingon ship on the moon."

"Yeah! Yeah!" Aphroodle nodded.

Chief Engineer's Log: Stardate 4222.1 We leave orbit Neural moon. Two engineerings on moon. Looking for parts. Parts to fix ship and stop Klingons from come back

"Orbit standard, Chi-Chi." Aphroodle turned in the captain's chair to face Cornrows. "Call captain."

A moment later, the sound of captain Lincoln's voice was heard over the speakers.

"Captain, here Aphroodle."

"Mister Aphroodle!" There was genuine affection in Lincoln's voice. "You're alive! How's my ship?"

"Broken, always."

"How broken, Mr. Aphroodle?"

"Seen worse."

"Good, good. I assume that was the Klingons who hit the moon?"

"Well, it sure as shit wasn't us!" Cornrows snapped.

"Glad to hear you're still with us, Lt. Africa. Mr. Aphroodle, I'm going to expect a full briefing from you in an hour, but I need you to make something a top priority for me first."

"That what?"

"It seems that Sybok," there was no missing the sneer in Lincoln's tone. "Failed to fully plan for our mission here. We have plenty of books, but if we're going to get this stuff properly disseminated, we're going to need a printing press. Do you think your people can whip us up one? I want it designed so that it can be easily used and duplicated by these people, and now that I think about it, you'd better make us at least a couple of them. I don't want to take a chance on something happening to the only one before these people learn how to make their own."

"I only Pakled on ship. My people too far away to help." Aphroodle replied.

There was the distinct sound of Lincoln smacking his head with the communicator.

"No, Mister Aphroodle," Lincoln struggled to maintain a calm tone. "I mean, can you have engineering make us up at least four printing presses?"

"Oh, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Aphroodle nodded vigorously. "Can do! Can do!"

"Good. Beam them down as soon as they're ready, and I'll expect that report in one hour. Lincoln out." He snapped shut the lid to his communicator and turned back to the others. "Now, gentlemen, let's see if we can't resolve this issue."

"Henry, you can't expect me to allow these people to continue to remain in ignorance of germ theory! We have a chance to save billions of lives. Imagine if we could stop the bubonic plague from hitting Europe during the Dark Ages! That's 200 million people saved, right there! How many people in the Americas died because they had no resistance to European diseases? There's the nonsense with bloodletting? How many people did that kill?"

"Doctor," Sybok sounded patronizing. "I understand your concern, but this planet's destiny has already been interfered with once, and we have no idea of the possible outcomes from those actions. If we continue on this course, we may do more harm than good."

"Listen, you bipolar logician--" Lincoln held up a hand to cut Hatfield off.

"Sybok, doctor, you both make very good points, but let's face it, all likelihood, these people are probably fucked. We've shown them the concept of the written word before they've ever domesticated any animals. Hell, the Klingons have taught them some comparatively advanced metal working technologies. Both sides have given them flintlocks! And we don't know when, or if the Klingons will return to continue to muck about here. We have to do something if these people are going to have a chance to survive! Sybok, how many Hill People do you think there are?"

"Uh, at a rough guess, maybe a thousand."

"And how many villagers?"

"Perhaps twice that number."

"Now, we know that these people have trading networks, but it takes time, years even, for people to traverse this continent, and there's societies of similar technological levels scattered on the other continents and large islands on this planet. It took us, on Earth, hundreds of years, once the Age of Exploration began, to discover every inhabited spot on the planet. With what we're planning on giving these people, it'll still take centuries for them to explore this world. And unlike our ancestors, they'll have the wisdom and knowledge at the beginning, that it took our societies thousands of years to develop.

"We have no idea if the village people are the only group of natives that the Klingons have made contact with, nor do we have the time and resources to find this out. We have to work with this group here. That means that there will still be diseases out there which can kill them, and perhaps there's a disease like AIDS out there, which they won't be able to detect until their technology is sufficiently advanced. It will kill millions of people, helping to ensure that these people continue to develop a robust immune system, and once they are able to detect and diagnose the disease, unlike our ancestors, they won't sit idly by for over a decade as it kills people.

"I hate to compare these people to children, but all we can do, gentlemen, is give them the best tools we possibly can and hope that they don't use them to kill themselves. Now, let's go see if we can convince Tunare the value of antiseptics."

"Tunare, I apologize for the disruption." Lincoln said as they returned to the fire.

"Disruption seems to be the way of your people." Tunare replied wryly.

"It can appear that way, I admit, but I think that you'll find its benefits outweigh any disruption." Lincoln suppressed the desire to call Tunare an ignorant savage before having the Hill People's camp vaporized by the ship's phasers. "As I was saying, your Eh-neeek-chock, sounds similar to what our people call karma, and I believe your people have a similar term, don't they, Sybok?"

"We call it, 'Lakanookie' on Vulcan." Sybok deadpanned.

"Yes," Lincoln quickly shot him a dirty look and continued on. "The solutions both our people's came to are remarkably similar. The men and women who are most troubled by this worry that our well-meaning actions can have negative consequences for someone else, become ascetics. People who retreat from the rest of society to reflect upon the deeper meaning of life, and to create ways in which all persons can live in happiness and harmony with one another. They live simple lives, and they endeavor, through sitting quietly, or by doing exercises, to bring balance to the world as people who harm no other living creature. Many of them have produced great wisdom and both our societies owe a great debt to them. On Earth and Vulcan, great numbers of people believe that were it not for those individuals, we would have destroyed ourselves.

"In addition to the secrets of medicine, we have brought their secrets along with us to teach you. If you find practicing medicine our way distasteful, then perhaps you will find the life of an ascetic more to your nature. Indeed, their philosophy is much like your own, before the Dark Skinned Ones came."

Tunare sat silently for a few minutes, deep in thought. At last he moved slightly and looked up at the others.

"I will listen to the doctor's advice, and if I find that it is not to my liking, I will become one of these ascetics you have talked about."

"Excellent! Sybok and I will leave the two of you to your work."

As Lincoln and Sybok walked away, they heard Dr. Hatfield talking excitedly about how Tunare was going to be able to experience the greatest period of any planet's medical history when everything was all "know-how and make do." Hatfield was explaining how he once removed a uterine tumor with his teeth when the conversation was lost in the distance.

"Captain, I feel compelled to point out that you have effectively given these people religion. On Earth, religion was responsible for some of the bloodiest wars in human history."

"Sybok, it's Buddhism! Sure, religion's not the greatest thing in the world, but at least I didn't give them Scientology. And besides, Buddhism's a fairly peaceful religion. Its not like they went around committing genocide for centuries."

"True, but I think it would have been better if you'd have taught them something like Tantric practices."

"You know, Sybok, I realize that this might come as a surprise to you, but not everybody wants to be able to bend themselves into a pretzel so they can suck their own dick."

Any retort Sybok might have made was cut-off by the sound of Lincoln's communicator beeping.

"That'll probably be Aphroodle calling to give me a report." Lincoln pulled his communicator from his belt. "It'll probably take me three hours to figure out what he's saying. Why don't you go and teach the natives something?"

"Orion Sexual Meditation?" Sybok practically threw himself at Lincoln with excitement.

"Sure, whatever." Lincoln waved Sybok off as he flipped open his communicator and began listening to Aphroodle's report.

"Team One to Team Two," Doz's voice crackled in Terence's ear. "What's it look like on your end?"

"So far it looks like the orbital survey was right, for once, and most of the sections of the Klingon ship that impacted away from the core are largely intact. I don't know how they survived the impact. I would have thought the ship would have hit with enough force to vaporize half the moon." Terence was standing in the debris field created when the starboard propulsion unit impacted Neural's moon. The unit had broken off from the main body, which tumbled, shedding sections and bouncing up into space before coming back down on the port unit, which also broke off the ship. The main section had come down next, shearing off the boom, and when the main section had impacted again, hundreds of kilometers away, the containment field around the warp core collapsed causing the explosion Lincoln and the others had seen from the surface.

"Aphroodle would have had the warp drive cycling on and off pretty rapidly. That close into Neural, we'd have been in danger of shifting the planet's orbit had he thrown it on at full power and left it there. So, when the ship hit, it probably wasn't really going all that fast. Done right, they may have hit with slightly more than terminal velocity for this place.

"I've got to say, Aphroodle's shown himself to be a damn site cleverer than I thought a Pakled could be. Not only did he manage to take out the Klingon ship, but he did it in a manner which allows us to scavenge it for spare parts! Hell, if Jim Kirk was twice as good as he thinks he is, he couldn't have done half as well!" Doz was exultant as he spoke.

"You know," Terence was squatting down, trying to examine some of the debris, while silently cursing the screening that covered the faceplate of his spacesuit helmet. "The hull plating on the Klingon ship is better than what we've got on ours, we'd be stupid if we just left it here. I don't know how long it'd take for us to adapt it to the Nixon, but we'd stand a better chance of surviving this mission with it added to our hull."

"No shit." Doz stopped walking and studied the readout on the compartment door of the propulsion unit section he was examining. He grabbed his Tricorder and let it scan the display in order for it to be translated. "Hey! I found a compartment that's got pressure in it! How much do you want to bet that there's still Klingons alive in it?"

"No bet." Terence grinned. "Even if you can't get a reading through the hull, the way the sections spun around, everybody in that ship probably got turned into goo."

"You're a smart man," Doz pulled out his phaser and used it to cut the section most likely to provide power to the magnetic locks holding the compartment doors closed. "I'm going in here and I don't want to wait to drag a portable airlock over. So if they're not dead now, they will be as soon as I get this door open."

The lights on the panel by the doors suddenly went out, and there was a slight shift to the doors. Doz released the trigger on his phaser, re-holstered it, and began scanning the area for something to pry the doors open with. Spotting something a few meters away that he thought might work, he bounded over, grabbed it, leapt back, a feat made possible by the low gravity of the moon, jammed it into the door crack, and put his weight against it to try and force the doors open.

As the doors sprung open, a thin purple mist drifted out. Doz stepped into the compartment and had a look around. He guessed that it was some kind of auxiliary control room. Why the hell anyone would need such a thing located in the propulsion unit in an era when computer technology was so sophisticated was beyond him. But then again, the Nixon had a similar set up it in her nacelles and she was some fifty years old. It was almost as if everything in the universe had been designed around the middle of the 20th Century on Earth. A crazy idea, he would be the first to admit, but not any crazier than any number of other beliefs found in the Federation.

"Man, this place looks like Jackson Pollock threw up in it!"

"Who?" Terence was grunting as he pried open a compartment on his propulsion unit.

"A mid-20th Century wife beating alcoholic who made his living randomly pouring colored chemicals on pieces of cloth."

"That was a thing?" Terence stumbled into his compartment. It looked like an access tunnel junction. There was some kind display on the opposite wall with a series of concentric circles cut into wedge shapes. He stared at it for a few moments and then realized that it was some kind of countdown timer. It couldn't be an auto-destruct, as that would have gone off already. Most likely, it was to alert the crew how much reserve power they had left in the section.

"Yeah, we learned about it in Applied Historical Psychology. They called it 'art,' but in reality, it was more a manifestation of how damaged their society was, than anything else. They prided themselves on being peaceful, even while they killed millions of people, and the fact that they thought works which couldn't even have a basic form of composition showed their unwillingness to put any serious effort into any number of tasks.

"It really began to manifest itself a few decades after Pollock's death. One of the great powers would trump up reasons to invade a smaller country, proceed to blow the shit out of it, and instead of sticking around to do a massive rebuilding effort, would just leave, claiming that there was nothing they could really do and that the natives were savages. Even though this would bite them on the ass years later, they never learned from their mistakes and kept doing it."

"Sounds awful."

"It wasn't all bad. Their spacesuits, for example, didn't have these stupid cheese grater things over the helmet. They also had these things called 'mobile phones' which were like our communicators combined with a Tricorder. And they had cameras small enough to mount on their helmets, complete with a radio transmitter. They could beam live video back to their ships, or even to the opposite side of the planet."

"Its the 23rd Century! Why don't we have shit like that?"

"Unfortunately, in 2020 a consortium of technology companies managed to lock up all the patents on the technology."

"But, the Resource Wars of the mid-21st Century bankrupted all the corporations!" Terence exploded.

"Never underestimate the power of lawyers to really fuck things up."

"And they think us 7Gers are the dumb ones! When they formed the first united Earth government in 2200 they should have tossed out all those old laws."

"Hey, guys!" Stamper's voice interrupted the conversation. "I'm up here in the bow section and guess what I found!"

"Zefram Cochran?"

"Funny. We found him last year. No, their torpedoes are intact and so's the reserve of antimatter used to power them!"

"Whoa." Doz stopped trying to figure out the controls. "We'd better let the ship know. This gives me an idea."

Lincoln listened intently to the word salad coming out of his communicator. From what he'd been able to piece together, Aphroodle had taken out the Klingon ship by clever use of the warp drive, and that there had been a small band of Klingon shock troops on the Nixon, but they'd been taken care of, with no one important killed. If Section 7G was for the rejects that couldn't be kicked out of Starfleet, then the floor buffers in 7G were the absolute bottom of the barrel. The engineering teams on Neural's moon had not only found valuable pieces of the Klingon ship that they could deliver to Starfleet Intelligence the next time they stopped at a Starbase (along with the two surviving Klingon prisoners), but they had plenty of material with which to upgrade the Nixon, as well as put a system in place which would keep the Klingons from returning to this world. Clearly, Pakled's weren't nearly as dumb as they seemed, if Aphroodle was able to pull all of this off.

"Aphroodle," Lincoln said after the Pakled had finished giving his report. "Remind me to give you a commendation once we get back to the ship. You have singlehandedly done more to help Starfleet Intelligence than anyone else in the Federation. If Starfleet had any sense, they'd move us all out of 7G after this, but I think we all know that's out of the question.

"I'm going to have Sybok send up a list of supplies we need, and once you've gotten them down to us, your orders are to go back to the moon and use all available personnel to strip the Klingon wreckage and get everything ready. Put the prisoners in stasis if that'll let you get more people on the moon. We're two weeks or so behind the Enterprise, and I don't have any idea of what Kirk's up to. Even if he hasn't fucked anything up yet, he'll do it soon enough, and the farther behind him we are, the harder it'll be to fix. Given the kind of clusterfuck this has turned out to be, I hate to think of what he'll do next. Lincoln out."

Lincoln flipped shut his communicator and headed off to find Sybok. He'd said something about teaching the natives Orion Sexual Meditation, which meant he was probably in trouble in the Hill People's camp. Hopefully they hadn't killed him, breaking in a new first officer was always tough, and the odds of getting another Vulcan were pretty slim.

Entering the camp, he asked the first person he saw if they knew where Sybok was. They pointed him to a tent some distance away that had clouds of smoke billowing out of it. Lincoln ran over to the tent, assuming that it was on fire, with Sybok having been tied up by the natives and deliberately torched.

"Sybok!" He flung open the tent flap and peered inside, expecting to find a raging inferno. Instead, he found Sybok glassy eyed, naked save the furs he was wrapped in, cuddling with a native woman, beside what was obviously a giant incense burner.

"Henry!" Sybok waved affectionately to him. "You've got to try this stuff! Both the, what did you call it my dear?"

"Narito." The woman giggled and waved to Lincoln.

"Both narito and Yrucrem here," Sybok gestured to the woman. "Are fucking mindblowing. And Yrucrem is good at both fucking and blowing!"

The woman giggled, and nuzzled Sybok gently.

"Maybe later, Sybok." Lincoln didn't want to think of all the possible ramifications of Sybok offering him both a powerful drug and a piece of tail. It could provoke a diplomatic incident, or it could be the time of his life, and he didn't have time to figure out which. "I need you to pull yourself together and come up with a list of things we need from the Nixon before she leaves orbit."

"Leaves orbit?" Sybok was suddenly sober. "Where's she going?"

"Back to Neural's moon. Aphroodle's got two teams of engineers there going over the wreck of the Klingon ship to try and salvage as much of it as possible as well as set up a defense system for this planet to keep the Klingons from coming back."

"I thought that the Klingon ship hit the moon and was destroyed." Sybok staggered around the tent, trying to keep from falling over as he gathered up his clothes.

"Nope. Aphroodle managed the impossible. He killed the Klingons, except for two that are locked up in the Nixon's brig, and neutralized their ship. One he gets back to the moon, most of the ship's crew are going down to the moon to strip the wreck. We'll bring their data banks and a few other things with us to the next Starbase we stop at. The armor plating from their hull will be used to re-enforce ours, we'll upgrade our weapons with some of theirs, and the rest of them, along with the superstructure will be used for a planetary defense system."

"Holy, fuck!" Sybok stumbled out of the tent, half-dressed. Lincoln couldn't help but notice that the whites of Sybok's eyes were green, this confused him for a moment, before he realized that this was the Vulcan equivalent of being bloodshot. "How did the retard manage to pull all that off?"

"Fuck if I know, but its the biggest goddamn thing anybody's done to get Klingon hardware into Starfleet's hands. No matter what, no matter how shitty it is being stuck in Section 7G, they can never take this away from us. Fuck Jim Kirk and the rest of Starfleet command! They can treat us like shit all they want, but we're the ones who save their asses."

"So, what's this list of things you want me to get to the Nixon?" Sybok was completely dressed by this point.

"I was thinking, we need to do more than just give these people writing and the other things we've talked about. The key to any civilization developing is rapid communication over long distances. They'll no doubt be able to figure out how to do it with messengers once they domesticate something like a horse, but that could take years, if not decades. In the meantime, these small groups we've been dealing with could be wiped out by disease or natural disaster. How much trouble do you think it would be to teach them how to build a telegraph?"

"Hmm." Sybok sniffed his fingertips as he thought. "They're almost at the necessary metallurgical level, but I don't know if this planet has something like rubber which could be used for insulating the wiring. I'm assuming you're wanting to get all of this done as quickly as possible?"

Lincoln nodded.

"In that case," Sybok began gesturing to illustrate his points. "What we need is something that they can use with the skills they presently have. I have an idea, its not a perfect solution, but it will do almost everything a telegraph can do, and the skills needed to operate can be easily taught. A heliograph."

"Heliograph? What's that?"

"Its basically a fancy signaling mirror. During the day, it'll reflect the sun's light to send messages, at night, they can power it with a candle or a lamp. Its limited to line-of-sight, but the range is several miles, more if they install the system on top of towers and use larger mirrors."

"And when they do develop the telegraph, they can use the heliograph towers to string the wires. I like it. Have Aphroodle make up a couple hundred, and send down anyone onboard who's trained as a xenopologist or at least taken a course on it at the academy. There's no way the three of us can teach the Hill People how to read, and we still have to make contact with the village people and start teaching them. We're going to need more help. I want us to be ready to leave when the Nixon gets back from building the defense system on the moon."

Lincoln gestured to indicate that Sybok should call the Nixon and headed off in search of Tyree. He wanted to see how he was doing after Hatfield's treatments. He also hoped to find if there was a way that they could ensure at least a temporary truce between the Hill People and the village people. If they could meet under a flag of truce, it would make things easier for them to begin teaching the village people how to read. Without it, they could potentially have a very difficult time.

He found Tyree in the center of the camp, holding court. As with all societies, there were disputes between individuals, and as tribal leader, Tyree had to spend at least a portion of every day settling them. While he waited, Lincoln enjoyed the peace and quiet of Neural. Sure, they didn't have anything approaching modern medicine, transporters, warp drive, anti-grav units, or the other things people in the Federation took for granted, but they also didn't have all the noise, constant distractions, and rapid pace found in the Federation. If only there was some way that they could duplicate the peacefulness of this world, perhaps put it in a section of the ship, so they could take it with them, and could pop into it whenever the mission got to be a bit too much for them.

Ten minutes after having that thought, Lincoln realized how incredibly bored he was. All he could do, was to sit and wait for Tyree to finish handling the natives problems, which were pretty damned dull. One tribe member was upset at another tribe member because the first thought that the second had cheated him on a trade. Another tribe member was seeking Tyree's help in getting a woman's father to allow him to marry her. A third tribe member wanted to know why Tyree had forbade him from owning a flintlock. The fact that he'd accidentally shot four other members of the tribe the one time he'd been allowed to use the weapon, didn't seem to strike him as a valid enough reason.

Eventually, the petitioners were all heard, and Tyree motioned for Lincoln to approach him. Lincoln got up, bowed his head respectfully towards Tyree, and stepped forward.

"Tyree, I was wondering, do you and the village people have some kind of signal you give to one another to indicate when you wish to talk to one another and are not there to fight?"

"No, we do not." Tyree seemed genuinely puzzled by the concept. "When the village people see us, they try and kill us, and when we see them, we try to do the same. We no longer talk to one another. Why do you ask?"

"If we are to return your world to peace, then we must give our magic to the village people as well as to you."

"I must admit that I am not impressed with most of the magic you have shown us so far." Tyree's tone was curt. "Your healer has done me much good with his magic, but the other magic, all is the same as it was before. And the pointed eared one, all he does is burn the narito and sleep with our women."

"I apologize," Lincoln was conciliatory. "As I said before, our magic takes much time to learn, and with just the three of us here, it has been difficult to devote the necessary time to teach you. I assure you that is going to change shortly. More of my people will be here shortly, and they will dedicate all their time to teaching our magic to your people.

I'm feeling parodied...