Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn (Aid to the Needy)

"And tell my servants that they should speak in a most kindly manner [unto those who do not share their beliefs]. Verily, Satan is always ready to stir up discord between men; for verily, Satan is man's foe. Hence, We have not sent you [unto men O Prophet] with power to determine their Faith."
— The Qur'an, Al-Isra 53-54

Deep in the emptiness of space, a pocket of nothing moved in utter silence, bound for parts unknown at hundreds of times the speed of light. Inside that pocket floated a great beaked prow, a pair of broad wings, painted in emerald green, a configuration used by only one species in the known galaxy. On the side of the great beak towered High Rihan letters the size of buildings that spelled out two words: ch'M'R Aen'rhien.

In a room atop the warbird's bow, the observation lounge nearest the bridge, an olive-skinned human woman knelt under the streaming stars on an ornate woven mat in Starfleet service blacks, head slightly bowed, eyes closed, facing eight degrees starboard of the stern, roughly the direction the ship's computer had given her for her homeworld, Earth. An upturned chair was in front of her. "Astaghfirullaaha rabbee wa atoobu ilayh," Jaleh Khoroushi recited in Arabic. She was almost done with her third salat of the day, the Afternoon Prayer.

She bent at the waist and touched her forehead and nose to the prayer mat. "Subhaana rabbiy al-a`laa wa bihamdih," she intoned, then, sitting up and placing her hands on her thighs, "Allāhu akbar."

The door of the lounge slid open and she caught a whiff of pan-fried hlai-hwy. Her empty stomach grumbled but she ignored it. "Ash hadu al laa ilaaha illallaahu wahdahu laa shareeka lah, wa ash hadu anna Muhammadan `abduhu wa rasuluh. Allaahumma salli `alaa Muhammadin wa Aali Muhammad."

She paused for a moment, then turned her head slowly toward the right and completed her prayers. "Assalaamu `alayka ayyuhan nabiyyu wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. Assalamu `alaynaa wa `alaa `ibaadillaahis saaliheen. Assalamu `alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. Allāhu akbar. Allāhu akbar. Allāhu akbar."

She opened her eyes to see a tall, heavily tattooed Rihan man leaning against the wall holding a hlai drumstick in one hand and a featureless box in the other, looking at her with an odd expression on his face. "Uh, don't mind me. Go ahead and do … whatever that was."

"It's called 'praying', Tovan, and I just finished, actually." She put the chair back where she got it and started rolling up the mat.

Tovan tr'Khev stood there for a moment, then suddenly remembered. "Oh, I brought you some lunch, Jaleh."

She glanced up, pushing her shoulder-length black hair out of her face. "Can I take a rain-check?"

The Aen'rhien's security chief raised an eyebrow. "Come on, you haven't eaten anything all day that I'm aware of."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You keeping tabs on me?"

"I'm chief of security on this warbird, and I'm your friend. I get worried when my friends don't eat."

"Well, don't be. I'm fasting. It's Ramadan."

"What is?"

"It's a holy month in my faith."

"That anything like this 'Christmas' I heard about on our last rotation home?"

She laughed as she slid the rolled-up prayer mat back into its storage case. "No, that's something else entirely. Christian holiday that got bastardized by big business centuries ago. We've managed to avoid that." She tucked the prayer mat into one of the cabinets and straightened her uniform jacket. "How much longer to Glintara?"

"I think we passed the heliopause a few minutes ago. Call it two, three hours. Hey, you're not going to believe what came through on the last squirt from Raenasa. The Eireth nnea Ortaimai just issued an arrest warrant for Enriov t'Venas."

"What on Earth for?"

"Piracy and war crimes in the Delta Quadrant, apparently. Ship gets disabled, Hazari pick up the distress signal, crazyfaelirh ih'wort nnea mogain steals their ship instead."

Jaleh scoffed in disbelief. "Who on Earth made her an admiral?"

The helmsman announced, "Coming out of warp in five, four, three, two, one, now." The streaming stars on the viewscreen silently slowed and became stationary and a patchy brownish-green orb transfixed with patches of blue-green ocean inflated into view. Four large continents, ice caps at either pole, no real distinguishing features from any other Class M rock in the Milky Way.

Jaleh hit her communicator. "Khre'Riov t'Thavrau to the bridge," she requested in Rihan.

"Sensors detecting one Lloannen'galae vessel, Olympic-class," the antecenturion at sensors noted calmly. "No other vessels in the vicinity."

"That'll be the Moser," Riov tr'Sauringar acknowledged. "Drop cloak and hail them." The viewscreen shifted to a view of the bridge, with a buxom blonde Bajoran lounging in the captain's chair. "USS Moser," he said in Federation Standard, "this is Commander Sarsachen tr'Sauringar, executive officer of Republic Warbird Bloodwing."

"Shaoi kon, Riov," the blonde replied.

"Dochai-difv Rihan hwi?" tr'Sauringar asked in surprise.

The Bajoran shook her head. "No, 'hello' is about the full extent of my Romulan, sorry. I'm Commander Dumeete Chulin, Captain Gaahril glasch Proll's first officer. You gave us a bit of a scare."

"Sorry about that, standard procedure is to come in cloaked."

"Meh, rules are rules. I see from our scans you've got the cargo."

"Forty kilotons of bloodfire vaccine and antivirals," tr'Sauringar confirmed, referring to the crates suspended in the void between the warbird's twin hulls. He turned his head to the right. "Enarrain Khoroushi?"

Jaleh stood and stepped into the frame, eliciting a confused look from the Bajoran. "Sir, I'm Lieutenant Commander Jaleh Khoroushi, ops officer and Starfleet liaison to the Bloodwing. I'll be handling logistics on this end."

The turbolift on the port wall hummed and slid open and a slim, weathered-looking Rihanha with long black hair stepped out. Jaleh snapped to attention and barked, "Sir! Leih on the bridge!"

"As you were," t'Thavrau said. "Commander Dumeete, I believe?"

"Pleasure to meet you, Subadmiral."

"Where is Captain Proll?"

"Dirtside, helping in a treatment center and generally making a nuisance of himself to the local politicos." Off t'Thavrau's disapproving look, "He's a Tellarite, sir. I don't think the Romulan style is exactly a match."

"Ah. I suppose things must be chaotic, what with Glintara having just broken away from the Shiar ih'Saeihr Rihan."

"Yes, sir. Setting up a new government after a revolution tends to do that to you. I oughta know—I was born just before the Occupation ended. Place was a mess when I was growing up."

"Ch'Mol'Rihan was much the same early on, Commander. And that was without a bloodfire outbreak. We can begin beaming the supplies down as soon as you give us coordinates."

Replicators were an incredibly useful technology but they had their limitations, chief among them that they couldn't create living matter. That was as much a problem with certain Klingon foodstuffs as in medicine, as by far the most effective vaccine for bloodfire was an attenuated live-virus type, and Glintara didn't have the facilities to make it on-site.

Which meant it fell to hand-delivering the vaccine. And because of the precarious political situation of Glintara, having declared independence from the Romulan Star Empire after the Hobus revelation but not a member of the Republic nor the Federation, and with sightings of Havran and Nausicaan pirates in the area, it had to be done by a warship to ensure the supplies actually arrived.

Jaleh dispatched the latest set of coordinates to the transporter officer. It had to be done carefully and in many trips because the vaccines had to be transported at life-form resolution or risk ruining a batch. They were also delivering stasis crates by runabout and shuttle to more remote locations on the far side of the planet, out of reach of a transporter beam. Easily a seven-hour operation or more, all told.

A smaller Rihanha put her hand on Jaleh's console and she looked up. White coat, heart-shaped face, ebony hair in a bob-cut. It was Emira t'Vraehn, the warbird's CMO. "Time for you to get innocked, rekkhai," she said, holding a pill bottle. "Bloodfire's already jumped species once. Can't have it getting a taste for Terrhasu."

"Do you have an injectable form?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "I can get one. Why do you—"

"Religious rules. I'm not allowed to put anything into a body cavity during the day this month." Her stomach grumbled again.

T'Vraehn stared at her, then made a derisive noise. "That's absurd."

"We're supposed to focus more on the teachings, cleanse the soul."

"What the Areinnye kind of good does starving yourself and maybe dying of bloodfire do for your soul? Take the pill."

"Put it in a hypospray. Please."

The doctor reached into her bag, grumbling something that sounded like "ridiculous Terrhasu" and jammed the hypospray into Jaleh's jugular a little harder than strictly necessary. Jaleh winced at the pinch. "It'll take a few hours to be effective. You're not to go dirtside until then."

"Shouldn't be necessary; I can do almost everything from right here."

As t'Vraehn left, still grumbling, the Havranha at sensors called to her from his station, "Enarrain Khoroushi, we might have a problem. I'm picking up a large number of people moving towards the treatment center. Uh-oh."

"What 'uh-oh'?" She came over to look over the pale, wrinkle-faced antecenturion's shoulder. "Oh." She slapped her combadge. "Khoroushi to tr'Khev, if you've been innocked, get a security team together in riot gear and get to the transporter room. Possible civil disturbance breaking out in Ra'tarah." Then the sensor console chimed. "Oh, what now?"

The Havranha tapped along the touchscreen and it switched to a system plot. "Warp signatures, entering the system. Multiple ships, several high-mass signatures. Not close enough to identify but they're defo not Rihannsu orLloannen'galae."

Jaleh straightened and hit her badge again. "All hands, all hands. Sound yellow alert. Possible incoming hostiles." She pointed to the comms officer as a two tones hummed through the intercom and the bridge lighting flicked from white to yellow. "Get the Moser's sensor officer online, see if they can get a better reading." Even with all the tech exchanges between the Republic and the Federation, Starfleet gear still had a measurable edge in quality.

"Daie, rekkhai. Getting a response. Rekkhai, they're not friendlies. Nasikannsu."

Nausicaans. Great. And they couldn't leave orbit, not while they were still offloading the supplies. "Keep monitoring. If they come closer than thirty light-minutes sound battle stations. And send a message to Raenasa requesting reinforcements."

Tovan ir'Hfihar tr'Khev and a security team materialized at the Ra'tarah Central Hospital with battle rifles in hand and immediately flagged down one of the local ladyyhti'theirrir guarding the place. "Tovan tr'Khev, security chief, ch'M'RAen'rhien," he half-yelled to make himself heard over the noise of the crowd outside.

"Firh tr'Radaik, police chief. That mob outside is getting nasty."

"What's the problem?"

"Somebody posted a video on the local net showing your ship firing on a refugee convoy. They think you're Tal'Shiar, here to spirit away their loved ones! It's ridiculous! Obvious fake!"

Tovan swore under his breath. "It's real."

"What?"

"Footage is real, the Aen'rhien used to be a Tal'Shiar ship, but that all happened over two years ago, before theKreh'dhhokh Mol'Rihan got the ship when the next leih defected."

"Elements. Fine, damage control."

"Yeah. I'll try to reason with them, but if that doesn't work the Moser has the area marked for a stun-level blast from their ventral phasers." Tovan checked the safety and settings on his rifle—a borrowed Lloann'mhrahel phaser, he didn't want to hurt anyone he didn't have to—and pushed out the front door to face the crowd yelling insults and profanity. Tovan and his team followed.

The chief hit his loudspeaker as a rock hit the wall over his head and ordered, "This is the dyyhti'theirr. You are ordered to disperse and return to your homes immediately."

"Imirrhlhhsen mogai!" somebody up front bellowed back. "They're Tal'Shiar! They're going to take us away and feed us to the Elachissu!"

A bottle whizzed past Tovan's helmet and shattered against the hospital wall. He ignored it and retorted, "We are notTal'Shiar! We're Kreh'dhhokh Mol'Rihan! Elements, Starfleet was first on the scene here—you really think theLloannen'galae would work with the Tal'Shiar? This is a mission of mercy, you idiots! Now everybody calm down, we'll get you all checked out and vaccinated—"

"Why don't you come down here and try this hlai dung?!" somebody else, a huge man built like a smashball linebacker, shouted. "You're only brave 'cause you got a gun! All we got's … what we got," he finished, hefting an empty ale bottle.

Tr'Radaik sent to Tovan on a private channel, "That's Rabak tr'Venku. Local troublemaker and conspiracy theorist, but he's been mostly harmless 'til now. Where are you going?" he asked as Tovan started down the staircase.

Tovan ignored the chief, walked right up to tr'Venku, and shoved the phaser rifle in his face; the other man instinctively grabbed it. Then Tovan took the bottle and stepped back, glaring at him. "Now you've got the gun. All I got is … what I got. Go ahead. Use it."

Now tr'Venku looked nervous, and the people around him started backing away. "No way. I drop you, your boys blow my head off."

"Maybe, maybe not. Areinnye, I go down, instant promotion for my second. That'd flatter her mnhei'sahe, wouldn't it? Her getting a new job 'cause her boss was an idiot?"

He held the other man's gaze for a long moment, and finally tr'Venku said, "Look, uh, I was just talking. I didn't mean nothing."

"Good. Now give me the gun back and beat it." He turned his loudspeaker back on. "As for the rest of you, form an orderly line and we'll start the vaccinations in about five minutes." He walked back up the stairs and back inside.

His second, Enarrain Ael t'Lhoell, stood in the lobby staring at him with her mouth open. "Rekkhai, I don't know if that was ballsy or stupid. What if he'd gone for it? What if—what's that in your hand?"

Tovan tossed a heavy square of plastic to her. "Power cell. Palmed it when I gave him the gun."

She stared at him. "I—er—" Then she made a disgusted noise. "Rekkhai, are you trying to give me a heart attack? 'Cause one of these days you'll succeed."

"Status on those Nasikannsu?" Morgan requested from the sensor officer.

"Still coming, three minutes out."

"Khoroushi, how much have we offloaded?"

"Enough to last a few hours, but we're still going to have trouble maneuvering."

"Reinforcements?"

"Enterprise and Normandy are eight minutes out, Flaihhsam s'ch'Rihan, Eyiv s'Rea, and and Shavokh will be here in seventeen."

"The Enterprise? Riov Shon is coming?"

"Quantum slipstream, rekkhai. They were free and in range."

"Ah. T'Khnialmnae, sync TacNet with the Moser, raise shields, and put us on an intercept course."

"Cloak?"

"Leave it off for now, but charge it up."

A thrum through the floor and the planet swiveled out of view on the screen as the D'deridex-class warbird accelerated and began to break orbit.

"TacNet synced. Moser is on our wing."

"Good. Open a hailing channel." The comms officer waved her on and she switched to Federation Standard. "Nausicaan vessels, this is Subadmiral Morgaiah t'Thavrau of the Republic Warbird Bloodwing. Break off. Repeat, break off immediately or we will consider you hostile and act accordingly."

A green-skinned Nasikanha appeared on the screen. This one was even uglier than usual, greasy black hair and a nasty mass of scar tissue across the left side of his face, up to and including a hole right through his cheek. "Facial rec," she ordered the comms officer.

"You're in no position to make demands, Romulan jil'kresh. Maybe you didn't notice but there's eight of us and two of you."

"So why don't you get some more friends and make it an even fight," Sarsachen retorted derisively.

The Nasikanha waggled his middle finger—the index finger appeared to be missing—and responded, "Just for that, I'm gonna have some fun with you and then kill you myself."

"Khre'Riov," the comms officer said, "I got him. Vaklarash, chieftain of the Asgarev clan. They're not contracted with the Klling'hannsu, and he's got a rap sheet as long as my leg. Piracy, extortion, racketeering, murder, the works. Even the other Nasikannsu don't like him. Ooh, nice bounty, dead or alive even."

"Captain Vaklarash," Morgan said, "there is nothing here worth your time. This planet is in the grip of a bloodfire epidemic and we have no cargo of value but drugs for that plague."

"They're slowing, rekkhai! Coming out of warp now! Weapons hot!"

"Fire, forward battery."

T'Khnialmnae hammered a key and triple streams of plasma blasted from the bow of the Aen'rhien, hammering into the front of the Guramba-class leading the disorganized mob of ships. Return fire hissed into the shields as the warbird yawed to port. The Moser popped up over the top of the warbird and added its phaser fire.

The bridge lights dimmed as two Syphon-class frigates broke to port and starboard, dropping drones as they passed. "Losing power to weapons!" Khoroushi yelled. "Working on it, trying to compensate!" A spread of torpedoes crashed into the shields from a pair of destroyer escorts and the bridge shook. "Slight damage, armor plate!"

"All arrays to rapid fire! Get those drones out of my sky!" The warbird hummed as the secondary batteries fired.

"Moser, commencing attack pattern delta," a gravelly voice came through the radio. Probably that Telharha leih, Proll. "Recommend a decap shot. Take out Vaklarash's Guramba-class, we might be able to rout them. Dumeete! Tyken's rift on that escort, now!"

"There, got it!" Khoroushi crowed. An explosion rumbled through the deck and a siren wailed. "Hull breach, compartments 84 through 92, deck 29!"

"T'Khnialmnae, get us out of here," Morgan ordered. "Attack pattern D'Trel Five! Singularity jump in three, two, one, mark!" A momentary wormhole tore through reality ahead of the Aen'rhien, enveloping the ship, and suddenly they were on the far side of the fleet. "Fire!"

An enormous salvo of emerald-green fireballs belched from the aft plasma torpedo launcher as the cloaking device thrummed. The lights dimmed and the Aen'rhien vanished. "Divert shield power to engines! Hard about!"

Inside its pocket of nothing, the enormous warbird wheeled hard to starboard, the SIF struggling to maintain the ship's hull integrity in the turn, tighter than the D'deridex superstructure had ever been meant to turn. "Now! Decloak, engine power to weapons, and target that Guramba!" The cloak fell away and plasma lanced into the stern of the Nasikan destroyer, ensnared in the collapsing gravity well left behind by the jump. The shields glittered, buckled, and failed.

Just as five plasma torpedoes smashed into its stern. A searing, actinic flash of light momentarily washed out the viewscreen.

"Rekkhai," the sensor officer announced, "Reading two Lloannen'galae vessels coming out of warp in sector six! OneOdyssey-class dreadnought, one Avenger-class battlecruiser!"

"Picking up a broadcast in the clear," the comms officer added.

"This is Captain Va'kel Shon of the Federation Starship Enterprise. Nausicaan vessels, surrender immediately or I'll send you all straight to the cold place." No response came, but they weren't firing anymore either.

Then the comms officer started laughing. "Rekkhai, I've intercepted some of their transmissions and they've all started arguing about who's in charge."

Kneeling on the prayer mat, Jaleh turned her head slowly to the right. "Assalaamu `alayka ayyuhan nabiyyu wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. Assalamu `alaynaa wa `alaa `ibaadillaahis saaliheen. Assalamu `alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. Allāhu akbar. Allāhu akbar. Allāhu akbar."

She opened her eyes to see Tovan leaning against the viewport. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself. That your evening prayer?"

"Mm-hm."

"You hungry?"

"Famished," she answered, smiling. "That offer of hlai-hwy still open?"

"Yup. Your quarters or mine?"

"You've got the table, Tovan. But can we stop by a food replicator first?"

They went down three decks to the officers' quarters and Tovan palmed the access on his door. "What's in the box?" he asked her as they sat down and he got the hlai-hwy out of the stasis unit.

"Dates."

"That what this is? A date?"

She laughed. "Very funny. It's a kind of fruit. Traditional food for breaking one's fast with. I downloaded a replicator pattern from the extranet."

Tovan dug a bottle out of the stasis unit. "Ale?"

"Please." He poured her a glass and she opened the box of dates and passed him a handful.

"These are pretty good."

She nodded and popped one in her mouth, enjoying the flavor. Not the same kind they usually had back at the family home in Shahediyeh, but still tasty.

"Sorry I missed the fight. How bad were our casualties?"

"Eleven dead, twenty-five wounded. T'Vraehn's still got four of the criticals in surgery, last I heard."

Tovan's mouth tightened. "We had problems with Nasikannsu when I was working on Hfihar, but never this bad. Do we know what they were after?"

"Captain Shon's still grilling the acting clan leader. Simplest explanation? They just thought the planet would be easy pickings without the Grand Fleet picket and didn't check the extranet alerts before launching."

Tovan got up and opened the oven to retrieve the hlai-hwy, pulling a drumstick out of the box and holding it out to Jaleh. "What are we doing?"

"Doing? We're eating."

"No, I mean us."

"As far as I know, we're just two friends having dinner. But I'm open to suggestions," she added with a grin.

"Picked up a new holodrama from a Feh'rengi trader. Could do that."

"Now that, that would be a date."

Author's Notes: I had some trouble getting past the first scene (I had an idea to have Tovan walk in on Jaleh praying but had no clue what to do after that), but grylak's comments about "not everybody in the world has a good Christmas" gave me some inspiration. I got to thinking about a story I heard on NPR about how Sir Bob Geldof recently rewrote the lyrics of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to refer to the current West African Ebola epidemic,et voila.

The USS Moser was named after two of the three winners of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Medicine, May-Britt and Edvard Moser. I based its skillset on a drain build I dug up from STO Academy for the Fleet Research Science Vessel Retrofit. Also found a great use for the empty void between a double-D's hulls: cargo transport. I envision that for other missions the area might be filled with such things as additional quartering modules and materiel storage for surface invasions.

The bit about an Admiral t'Venas was me calling out another writer on the forums for doing exactly that in the piece they wrote for Literary Challenge 68 (the one where I submitted "Remembrance of the Fallen" and "To Absent Friends"). Leaving pure morality aside, there's a very good practical reason that in real life it is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to send a false distress signal or attack rescue ships. It makes people not want to respond to distress signals.

A major part of the challenge with writing Jaleh Khoroushi is getting the religious aspects right. Unlike with Eleya where I can mostly make it up as I go along, she's an adherent of a major real-world religion that I really only know the basics of (I'm a secular non-denominational Protestant by upbringing, Methodist by inclination). But I still want as accurate a portrayal as possible of a secular Twelver Shiite (the most common denomination in Iran, where Jaleh is from), so that means lots of research. Among other things, via Google I was able to find a Shi'a-specific step-by-step handbook for the salat, the five daily prayers. The upturned chair was a field-expedient sutrah.

It's interesting the practical changes that have to be made to get a practicing Muslim in Starfleet. Muslims have to pray facing in the direction of Mecca, which I solved by having her pray towards the Sol system. As for the times of day, I initially thought about calculating it based on Meccan time, but then I decided to go with ship-time. I can also imagine that, replicators being a relatively recent invention (TOS had industrial replicators but not food replicators; they were new in the 24th century), there might still be some debate over whether replicator food is halal (particularly where meat is concerned, since it was never an animal to begin with). Jaleh solves it by simply ignoring the dietary laws while on deployment (the Ramadan fast excepted), which has the added benefit of letting her drink Romulan ale socially in her capacity as a liaison officer.

Something else occurred to me regarding the epigraph I chose. While the Qur'an does exhort good Muslims to convert unbelievers, it repeats multiple times that you are only to wage war in self-defense. From 2:190, "Fight in God's cause against those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression." Chapter two in particular makes absolutely clear that you must not fire the first shot and that conversion by threat or force is verboten. Yes, you are supposed to convert the infidel, but you're supposed to do it with kindness. Just like the Federation.

So, peace be with you, no matter if you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Mawlid an-Nabī, Kwanzaa, the solstice, or some other winter holiday I've never heard of. From the Gospel of Luke, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."