THE WELLINGTON CHRONICLES
PROLOGUE
By Antonio Cabañas
Disclaimer: Star Trek in all its incarnations and all related characters are property of Paramount Pictures. Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry. Star Wars and all related characters are owned by George Lucas. I'm only borrowing them for fun. Ana Giovannotti, T'Lin, and the Zerlans have been created by me.
I wish to thank my beta-reader, Carycomic, for his help and support all this time.
E-mail: borg31de777yahoo.es.
Spoilers: Star Trek (the original series) "The Cage", "The Menagerie" and "The Doomsday Machine". Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, V and VI.
Zerla system, G'orrin stellar cluster
U.S.S. Constellation, NCC-1017
Stardate 1404.7
Commander Ana Giovannotti, first officer of the USS Constellation, had just lost another chess game with her commanding officer. She had been playing a good game, she knew but some stupid error that she still couldn't see had given the victory to Commodore Decker.
Commander, can I walk with you? – said lieutenant (j.g.) T'Lin, the communication officer of the Constellation.
T'Lin, we are friends and you can call me Ana, at least outside the bridge. -
Sorry, com… Ana . I only wanted to say that the Zerlan had just transmitted us their maps of the cluster. -
Very kind of them, considering how they received us. -
Their first contact with a Federation starship, three years ago, was quite… eventful. -
Indeed – answered Ana, who thought "A polite way of saying that was a royal mess. Captain Pike was lucky enough to get out without losing anyone." Then she remembered something. – T'Lin, you have been watching our chess game, what did I do wrong? -
You could have checkmated in the 47th movement if you had sacrificed your queen in the 45th. That's an error that you do frequently in chess, not to sacrifice pieces when you must. -
Exactly. – said Matthew Decker behind them. – Ana, sometimes we must do sacrifices. And I'm not speaking only of chess. Now that you are going to become the commander of the USS Wellington, you should bear in mind, that sometimes, you must put the life of the crew in jeopardy, even send them on a suicide mission if the stakes are high enough. -
STAR TREK / STAR WARS:
THE WELLINGTON CHRONICLES
PROLOGUE
Captain's log
Stardate 1407.4
The Zerlan premier has decided to host a goodbye dinner for us. I suppose that this is her way of apologizing for the way how we were received by the Zerlan Space Navy. This unexpected party is going to delay our departure by a few hours.
The celebration was finally over, and most of the senior officers were glad of that. The Zerlan tended to be long-winded and Zerlan politics carried that trait to extremes.
Commodore Decker walked toward the Zerlan premier to bid her farewell. The premier was a slender woman in her fifties, with the characteristic tawny hair and twin dark spots on both sides of the forehead of the Zerlan species. She was talking with two other Zerlans, obviously high-ranking officials of her government whe she saw Decker approaching and went to salute him with a charming smile.
Commodore Decker, I hope that this will be the beginning of a time of friendship between our peoples. -
I hope that also, premier Glynn. Another ship should arrive in a few weeks with diplomats to fine-tune the terms of the treaty. -
We'll be waiting for them. -
I should warn you that Federation diplomats have a reputation of being between the most obnoxious creatures in the Universe. – said Decker smiling.
I'm used to that, after all, here, in the cluster, we have thirteen starfaring civilizations sharing less than one hundred cubic light-years, so I think that I will manage. – answered the premier – What will be the next system that you will visit, by the way? -
I think that the name, in your starcharts, is Alyndick.Why do you ask? -
Oh, when I was younger I worked as a scientist in one of the few survey ships of our Space Navy. Probably a good portion of the info on our starcharts was collected by that ship. – answered the premier – Alyndick, you have said? A pretty boring system, from what I recall. But I thought that the previous Federation starship that was in the cluster, how it was called, by the way, had already been there. -
It was the USS Enterprise, premier. And I suppose that I'll have to check it. – said Decker.
"Odd" he thought. From what he remembered of Chris Pike's log, the next stop after Zerla was Starbase 27, to repair battle damage. Now that he thought about it, the Zerlan Space Navy ships hadn't strike him as powerful enough to inflict such damage to a Constitution-class starship. From the corner of his eye he saw the other crewmembers of the Constellation coming to where they were. It was time to get back to the ship.
Premier, I want to thank you for you hospitality toward me and my crew. -
The premier smiled, although with a bit of embarrassment.
It was the least that we could do after how we received you. The old regime records misled us totally about your intentions. – said the premier. – I hope that we will meet again. -
I hope so, too. – said Decker, while the other officers gathered around him. He signaled the premier who nodded and took two steps back, a bit too far, maybe, but the Zerlans had bad experiences with that kind of technology, although they were still experimenting with it. Decker produced a communicator from his belt and said. – Decker to Constellation, six to beam up. -
Soon after, they disappeared in a whirl of yellow sparks.
U.S.S. Constellation
On route to Alyndick system.
Captain's personal log.
Supplementeal
I have checked thoroughly Pike's log about the mission. I should have known that there was something odd about this when we first faced the Zerlan Space Navy. As I remembered, there was no record of visiting the Alyndick system, or of ever taking that route, but there were a few missing days when a visit to that system could have taken place.
I have sent a fomal petition to Starfleet Command about those logs, but one thing is clear. The missing logs contained something that had to be erased from the Enterprise'd database. And then, classified. I only have heard of one event where that measure was taken, the Enterprise visit to Talos IV, that resulted in the establishing of the only death penalty in the Federation's legal code. If this is the case, why haven't we been warned to stay away that system? I'm having a bad feeling about this…
TO BE CONTINUED…