DINNER AT TEN-FORWARD

by ardavenport

Note: This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in 1994, by Orion Press, as a separate fan novel back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days of fan-fiction, when the internet was just taking off.

- - - Part 1: Mission Ikainet

Picard frowned at the list in front of him.

Their mission to the Corzani Pulsar was out. He didn't like having to drop it but if the Enterprise was to be at Starbase 215 on time it couldn't be helped. On the positive side, they would be too late to attend the inauguration ceremonies on Losh VII, thus eliminating a detour to a tedious diplomatic affair. Starfleet would have to find some other ship to represent them. He couldn't change the timing of their mission to Sostoy; the priority for that was just too high, so he had to juggle the rest of the schedule around it. Their arrival at three locations was delayed while it was advanced at two others. And they would miss their rendezvous with the U.S.S. Bangkok entirely.

The Captain mulled over the ship's itinerary for another twenty minutes. Starfleet was constantly sending them new missions, many of them last-minute, critical, must-be-done-yesterday tasks. Picard expected occasional disruptions in their schedule, but this one was particularly bothersome. It now forced him to rearrange their assignments for the next four months.

He finished the schedule and moved on to the 'paperwork' that their new assignment had generated, though Picard thought that people had stopped using paper to do their work with long before Starfleet had even been created.

Four civilian scientists had logged immediate transfer requests. Word of their course change had spread fast. The destination of the four had been the Corzani Pulsar. One of them had even added some commentary about Starfleet not taking their research seriously. Picard couldn't place any faces with the names, but he didn't think he'd miss them.

Next came a long list of notifications of course changes and messages to send to their various destinations. A few required his personal attention, the rest he marked in yellow on his screen. These would be handled by Commander Riker.

Crew transfers were severely disrupted, affecting 37 people and 5 dependents either on the ship or due to board. All of them would have to arrange alternate transport through either Starfleet or their scientific or technical sponsors. He marked it all in yellow.

Cargo schedules, maintenance and supplies. Yellow.

They would miss a 120-day check on an upgrade of the ship's environmental systems. Picard made a note to talk to Lieutenant Commander LaForge about it later.

Three astrophysicists were planning an experiment that would require power from the warp engine with no interruptions for at least 14 hours. They'd been set to go during a long stop at Florein's Asteroid, but that was now cancelled. The Captain decided to talk to them first before deciding where to fit them in again.

He methodically went down the list. When he was done, over a third of it was marked in yellow. He sat back in his chair, stretched and turned to look out the port behind his desk. The stars streaked by in that peculiar warp field effect that always made the ship appear to be moving faster than it was. His own stern reflection stared back him from the transparency. He had finished only the first round of details for their new assignment. The next round would come when they arrived at Rigel.

Picard had not received any requests for leave at their new destination from any of the Enterprise's Starfleet personnel, but he knew they would be coming. There were a lot of things for people to do ashore in the Rigel system. Civilians were, of course, not required to ask Picard for permission for leave, but they were bound by any rules he set concerning the ship's schedule or risk being left behind somewhere. The Captain considered what those rules would be. Problems rarely arose, but the larger the port-of-call the greater the chance that someone would go astray. Picard thought seriously about not allowing any leave at all since their stop at Rigel would only be for half a day, but that decision would be unpopular. He finally decided on an eight hour shore leave window. That would give them a three to four hour safety margin to round up any stragglers.

And then there were the problems with taking the Enterprise itself to Rigel.

Picard, along with many other Starfleet captains, didn't like the Rigel system. With twenty two inhabited planets, moons, asteroids and major space stations, Rigel supported an insane amount of interplanetary traffic. All that commerce spawned huge bureaucracies that fell upon any ship requesting even something as simple as a parking orbit. It was less trouble going to Earth, even with its crowded spaceways; Starfleet Command at least took care of the formalities for you. At Rigel, Picard was at the mercy of every local official who wanted his time. He'd been to Rigel several times when he'd captained the Stargazer, and he expected that the official rituals had only gotten worse.

He turned back to his desk and put down fourteen hours on the schedule for the stop at Rigel. The Captain got up, got a cup of hot tea from the food dispenser, returned to his desk and keyed up the new mission briefing.

*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*

Commander Riker sat back in the command chair. The orders from Starfleet had come in a short time ago. The Captain had ordered the necessary course change and then disappeared into his ready room. The ship's schedule would have to be rearranged for the next few months judging from the size of their detour. Riker knew that he would get involved in the process, but only after the Captain had had first crack at it. In the meantime he keyed up Starfleet's new orders on the tiny screen in the armrest of the command chair.

The Enterprise was ordered to pick up the fifth H'car and proceed immediately to the Caroomad system to determine why the Roocaroom were disrupting all interplanetary travel in that system and hopefully convince them to stop.

The mission statement meant little to Riker. He'd never been to the Caroomad system, didn't know what a Roocaroom or a H'car was and had no idea why the other four H'cars weren't solving the problem in the first place. He keyed up the pictorial background data.

The Caroomad system was a relatively new member of the Federation, having been admitted only seven years ago. It was populated by an unremarkable humanoid race living on its one inhabited planet, but the system itself had one outstanding feature. Two billion kilometers out from its single yellow sun a nebulous dust cloud ringed the inner planets, where amidst the dust, frozen gases and small asteroids existed an uncommon species, the Roocaroom. A species of any size born in the vacuum of space was rare enough, an intelligent one was even rarer. The Roocaroom were both. The Federation had encountered such entities, but space born creatures had little in common with planet-bound life forms, so there was hardly much interaction between them. But in the Caroomad system the Roocaroom and the Caroomadi had apparently been on speaking terms, at least on a limited basis, for tens of thousands of years.

In space the Roocaroom were impressive. They had a roughly cylindrical shape from three to five kilometers long. Dozens of randomly-spaced, crystalline arms stretched out from the central trunk. The external body was formed of compressed dust and ice. Inside, the real living part of them, was a long core of hot plasma. They could propel themselves with their own warp field, though they usually didn't take the initiative to travelled faster than light. And along with generating their own warp fields they could also create a variety of gravitational, electromagnetic and undefinable fields as well. With these abilities a few dozen of the Roocaroom, the H'cars, had learned how to change and compress their outer and inner forms and enter the environment of a planet's surface. Over the millennia they had taken on a number of shapes and with the rise of the Caroomadi civilization, they had learned to imitate the form of a Caroomadi humanoid.

The number of the H'cars on the Caroomadi home world, Caro, had varied from as many as twelve down to two with a total of twenty-seven known different H'cars assuming humanoid form among the Caroomadi. But for the past 1300 years there had been only five living on the planet. Once considered to be gods by the ancients, the H'cars were now celebrities from the past in a modern society, sometimes performing tasks when asked and occasionally acting as liaison between the Caroomadi government and the Roocaroom.

But now the relationship between the planet and the Roocaroom had become inexplicably perturbed.

The Roocaroom were, for some unknown reason, moving about in the inner Caroomad system and interfering with interstellar shipping. When questioned about the activity the H'cars on the planet claimed to know nothing about it and to have no control over it as well.

Since the trouble had begun, nearly six weeks ago, two H'cars had left Caro and reverted back their natural form with no explanation. They had rejoined their fellow Roocaroom, but the situation had not improved. The two others had said that they had no information and had nothing to contribute to the situation. The Caro government had sent them out to find out what the Roocaroom were doing and come back. They had left the planet, resuming their natural form as Roocaroom. They had not returned. Satellite scans showed that they were milling around the inner system with all the other Roocaroom. The fifth, and last one, was not in the system at all and the Caroomadi government was demanding that Starfleet return her to them to help settle the difficulties. Riker puzzled over the wording of that demand. The Enterprise was now assigned to transport the last H'car back to the Caroomad system. The fifth Calo was aboard the U.S.S Beawolf and the Beawolf was headed for Rigel.

Returned? Riker pondered that again. What was this H'car doing aboard a Starfleet vessel anyway?

He noticed the time under the tiny screen. He was due in Engineering in two minutes. The new mission would have to wait for ship's business of the present. He signaled Picard that he was leaving Lieutenant Commander Data in charge of the bridge and headed for the turbolift.

*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*

Picard scanned the personnel record of the fifth H'car liaison. She (all H'cars were referred to as she even though they were actually sexless) had apparently existed in humanoid form for the past 5600 years. She had witnessed many of the major developments of Caroomadi civilization. Her name was Ikainet. Her abilities were godlike, at least to a primitive culture. She could produce a wide range of force fields, a number of them unclassifiable. She maintained her humanoid form with her own personal warp field which was itself wrapped within microscopically thin force fields that prevented the internal warp field from interacting with the real world. The size, shape and fluidity of all these fields were impossible according to the established theories of warp field physics, but that didn't make any difference to any of the H'cars.

All the H'cars could consume and produce huge amounts of mass and energy. In fact the more the better. Ten billion gigawatts of power were easier for them to deal with than one or two joules. They could all replicate matter to varying degrees, but large quantities of simple elements and molecules were easiest for them to produce, while small complicated things could take them weeks of trial and error to learn, though once they had mastered any particular form they retained that knowledge. But they never seemed to be able to use the forms previously replicated to learn new ones. They always had to start from scratch when learning a new form no matter how similar it was to anything they already knew. In spite of the exaggerations of the Caroomadi god legends, none of the H'cars had ever even come close to successfully replicated living matter. Ikainet, having been at one time the goddess of plenty to the ancient Caroomadi, seemed to have specialized in replicating food.

In appearance the fifth H'car was typical of the native humanoids of her system. She was slender with dark brown skin with a distinctive plum colored undertone. Her hair was outright purple, thick and hanging just past her shoulders. Her eyes were large, her face chinless, her lips thin. Mustaches grew at either side of her mouth, characteristic of the species she had chosen to adopt. The imitated humanoid senses of all the H'cars had been gradually developed millennia ago to detect the tiny amounts of light and sound needed to communicate with the Caroomadi around them. Their body movements and their speech were performed with microscopic amounts of energy compared to what they could easily deal with; these as well had been learned over aeons of practice.

Picard studied the image on his screen a few more moments before moving on to her more recent history. Her service record was not particularly impressive. In fact, it was outstandingly bad. He noted a number of odd incidents and a lot of commentary from her superiors, not surprising considering her origins. And there was a disturbing mayonnaise incident in Ikainet's record from a few years ago.

He sat back and sipped the last of his long since cold tea. It tasted bitter. He rose and entered the bridge.

"Mr. Data, estimated time of arrival at Rigel."

The android rose from the command chair. "We will arrive at the Rigel system in 5.35 days, Sir." He resumed his post in the fore bridge at the Ops station now vacated by a standby crew member.

"Good." Picard sat down and tugged his uniform into place. "The Beawolf will arrive for repairs at Rigel Four in two days. We will establish orbit and complete the transfer of Ensign Ikainet to the Enterprise as quickly as possible and then proceed to the Caroomad system."

"Aye, Sir," Data answered calmly.

"Transfer, Sir?" Commander Riker had just entered the bridge. He strolled down the ramp to the fore bridge and took his seat at the Captain's right. "I thought we were transporting the H'car liaison back to Caro."

"We are Number One." Picard turned to face him. "Ensign Ikainet is the Calo liaison."

- - - End Part 1