Chapter 4: The Home Guard
Enterprise entered the star system of Pratsis without incident and dropped to Impulse Drive.
"Lieutenant, hail Walmington, get me someone I can talk sense to," Kirk ordered. Pratsis cannot be allowed to start a civil war inside the Federation.
"No response, captain." Uhuru reported after several minutes of trying. "Governor Brittas is hailing, though."
Kirk sighed: "put him on main viewer."
"Finally got here," the man began. "Better late than never, I suppose."
Kirk was stung by a slight on his ship.
"The Enterprise maintained warp six all the way here, only a Constellation class starship can do that."
"Whatever," Brittas replied. "You took so long, I sent some of our security men up there to get the hostages back, and those idiots got themselves taken hostage as well. You should go straight in with photon torpedoes and blast the colonists off that lump of rock."
"Use of photon torpedoes would also kill the hostages, governor," Spock pointed out.
"This is war laddie, the losses would be within acceptable limits."
Kirk held up a hand: "we are not going to blast Federation citizens, governor. I intend to find someone in authority I can talk to and get this thing straightened out- without violence."
Brittas snorted. Two huge nostrils expanded to take up the screen.
"There's only two kinds from Iowa, Kirk- steers and queers. Which are you boy?"
"I am a starship captain and will not be spoken to like that by you," Kirk said, and made a throat cut gesture to Uhuru, who cut the feed.
"If that's what they've been dealing with, no wonder the Home Guard are fighting mad," Kirk said as he dropped into his chair.
"They may have another reason to be fighting mad, Jim," Doctor McCoy said as he left the turbolift. "I had the Pratsis medical authorities send me everything they had on that alien virus."
"What happened to the doors?" Bones asked as he fiddled with his tablet.
"We had a culture clash on the bridge," Kirk answered.
"Oh?"
"What were the medical findings doctor?" Kirk repeated, getting Bones back on topic. Bones leaned in to show the captain scans and diagrams.
"Their medical staff are idiots, that's what I found," Bones said gruffly. "This is an engineered virus designed to attack people with a double X chromosome."
"Women," Kirk said.
"Mostly, yes. This method of cutting the DNA string and see the joints highlighted here…. And here," Bones pointed out places on the scan. "This is Romulan technology. This thing was a weapon designed to kill the wives and daughters of the colonists on that one moon."
"Terrible, but how do you know it was designed only to kill women on Walmington?"
"Because this part of the DNA code is a kill switch," Bones pointed to a lot of paired letters, Kirk didn't pretend to understand. "After about six months, there was no active virus in any of the subjects in the colony."
"Then why have they been in quarantine for the last 25 years?" Kirk asked.
"Search me, although I found a note from the chief medical officer, he doesn't believe the governor has been reading the medical reports."
"So how does that make the medical people idiots?" Kirk asked, returning to Bone's opening comment.
"Because they've allowed this situation to go on for 25 years," Bones said. "I'd've been up to that man's office and made him hear the news that those people are safe."
"That's true," Kirk agreed. In another man, it might have sounded like bluster, but Kirk knew his friend too well.
"Uhuru, get me someone on that moon," Kirk ordered. "Anyone. They need to know we know there's no point in the quarantine."
"Say, you're the Shirley Warrior?" Bones said to the yeoman standing at attention exactly three feet from Kirk's chair.
"Yes sir," Crissy replied. Bones reached over and rubbed both hands in the long blond locks.
"Ababababa," he said. "There's ababababa."
"Bones!" Kirk called in alarm and moved to drag his old friend from danger.
"It's okay, Jim, I spent three months on Shirley a-while back. This is the formal greeting between equals."
"I am honoured, doctor," Crissy replied. "For you are remembered among the warriors of Shirley."
Kirk gave a sigh of relief.
"You seem to know how to handle her- him, do you need a yeoman in Sickbay?"
"I can always use another pair of hands," Bones replied. "With four hundred adventurous people on this ship, there's always someone getting hurt."
Chekhov announced:
"Sir, scanners picking up a ship on an intercept course. Small… probably a shuttle… Six life signs."
"Looks like the Home Guard are coming to us," Kirk said. "Prepare quarters, we'll treat them as honoured guests. I want them piped aboard with full honours."
Chekhov looked from the captain to Mr Spock, the young man worried.
Crissy laughed. His laugh had honey hues and made Kirk feel uncomfortable in the trouser area.
"The Home Guard come for us- this will be a glorious battle," he said.
"This is no laughing matter, Yeoman. Starfleet does not attack members of the Federation, no matter what Governor Brittas may decree," Kirk admonished.
"That is not laughter, captain. That is the Shirlean battle cry," Spock reminded him.
"The battle will be glorious and they will write songs of the end we make," Yeoman Crissy said.
"No one is making an end here today, Yeoman. Uhuru, open hailing frequencies."
"Hailing frequencies open, captain."
"I've heard of these men, I'll go prepare Sickbay for casualties," Bones said and left the bridge.
Kirk glanced around to see that Uhuru's large, dark eyes were brimming with tears although her mouth was set firm.
"Not you too, lieutenant? No one is dying here today."
"Yes, sir," Uhuru responded. "I mean, no sir. I think."
"How would you handle this, lieutenant?"
"We could ignore it and hope they go away?"
"Pretend nothing has happened and hope it works out alright in the morning?"
"Yes sir."
"That didn't work the last time, though. I'll try talking some sense into these people."
"Yes sir," Uhuru said. "Little Jim likes his new school, by the way."
"That's…. good lieutenant."
"Aye? Whit dae ye want?" a voice came through the speakers.
"Hello? Is that an Irish accent?" Kirk asked, trying to get on friendly terms.
"Naw, Big Man, it's no`."
"Am I talking to Captain Mainwaring?"
"Naw, son, they call me…. The Undertaker."
"Oh, waily waily," Crissy cried. "The Undertaker- the Thrice Dead- walks among us. We're all doomed."
"Knock it off Doll- that's my line," the voice said.
Kirk walked over to Spock's science station. "You said the Shirley were fearless warriors?"
"After First Contact, the Shirley attacked the Federation, devastating several colonies. The Home Guard were sent to pacify their home world- they appear to have left an impression."
The interior of a shuttlecraft appeared on main viewer and Kirk thought the man in the navigator position looked down on them sadly.
"They're all so very young," he said. He had a long, wrinkly face and a mop of light grey hair.
"So whit?" The pilot asked. "We were young once."
A man stood and glared into the tv pickup. He was almost as broad as he was tall and his bald head shone in the lights from the shuttle as if he had polished it. His moustache was white and trimmed down to a stubble. His eye glasses were as thick as dustbin lids.
"I'm Captain Mainwaring," he said.
"How sad," Kirk said. "You got old."
"Who's he calling old? I'm not old," an old fellow at the back shouted. His hair and moustache were white, and he waved around an archaic looking phaser rifle with a spike attachment. "I'll show you if I'm old or not! They don't like it up 'um."
"The Butcher," Crissy whispered hoarsely. "Where the Butcher walks, none may stand."
"What does that even mean?" Kirk demanded, before he turned to face the main viewer. "We are here to put a stop to this civil war nonsense. My Chief Medical Officer has reported that the virus has gone. Once the governor reads the report, we'll be able to sort all this out and get you released from quarantine."
"Oh, we're gonnae hae words wi' the governor," the pilot stated. "He's doomed. Doomed I tell ye."
"They're all so young, Captain Mainwaring," the navigator repeated. "Look, their navigator hasn't even started to shave."
"I have," Chekhov declared. "I shave every second month. Captain, tell them I am not so young."
"I know you vetoed my suggestion, but they're so young and Starfleet officers. Won't you reconsider, just this once?" The navigator asked.
"Well," Mainwaring coughed and looked uncomfortable. "Well… It's just…. Look, we've never done that before. Oh, very well, take care of it Wilson."
Kirk felt a lurch in his stomach. In all those decades of fighting, the one thing they've never done-
"You're going to surrender," he stated in a flat tone. There was a moment of shocked silence.
"I beg you're pardon?" Sergeant Wilson asked, a look of confusion on his mild face.
"The one thing you've never done in all your decades of fighting- surrender without fighting," Kirk said. "Right?"
"Us surrender?" Captain Mainwaring spluttered. "I've never heard such arrant nonsense."
"No, no, my idea was to give you the chance to surrender" Wilson explained.
"What? You expect the Enterprise to surrender?" Kirk spluttered.
"To save bloodshed and so on," Sergeant Wilson said.
"What the?" Kirk stopped his mouth moving and engaged brain before starting over. "The Enterprise is a Heavy Cruiser with a crew of four hundred- "
"So young," Wilson reminded him. "So very young."
"Of the most able officers in Starfleet, and you think we should surrender to six old men?"
"Keptain, shuttlecraft at eight thousand metres and closing, could be a collision course," Chekhov said.
"Shields up," Kirk ordered, then pressed a button on his command chair. "Transporter Room, lock onto that shuttle and beam the contents directly to the bridge."
"But keptain we haven't invented side-to-side transport yet," Chekhov pointed out.
"Sorry captain, they're too fast and too close to get a lock," the Transporter Chief replied.
"Five thousand metres and closing," Chekhov said.
"Tractor beam!" Kirk ordered.
"Too late," Sulu said, looking up from his scanner at the main viewer.
"Zero metres!" Chekhov cried, grabbing his console with both hands.
Kirk braced in his chair. Silence. He breathed out, and an explosion shook the ship and took out the lights.
"That was… odd," Spock said as he picked himself up and went to work at his science station.
"Captain, the shuttle did not collide with the ship."
"Then why did it explode?" Kirk asked.
"Unknown," Spock admitted. "However, it flew under the saucer section and exploded between the warp nacelles, unbalancing the warp field and shutting down our warp drive."
"They committed suicide to shut down our warp drive?" Kirk asked. "But Scott will have the engines back up in minutes."
The lights came on and a glance at helm and navigation proved to Kirk that he was right, and engines were running.
"Ah…." Spock said as he looked down his viewer. "Interesting."
"Spock, just tell me."
"Those old mining shuttles were equipped with transporters."
"But our shields were up, Mr Spock," Sulu blurted, just as Chekhov was opening his mouth to make that point.
"Fascinating," Spock said, as he continued to look down his viewer.
"Spock, you're building your part again," Kirk said.
"Apologies captain, but in examining the course the shuttle took, I have found that there is a two metre by six metre area, where the Engineering Section body meets the support for the Saucer section, which is not covered by shields."
Kirk hurried over and examined the schematic on Spock's viewer. A tiny area at the base of the Enterprise's neck was highlighted.
"It's never been a problem, because Engineering section and the warp nacelles would protect it from incoming ordinance, but the Home Guard could have beamed through there and boarded the ship." Spock cocked an eyebrow.
"Sir, we've changed course," Chekhov said. "Heading now Pratsis 5 at half Impulse Power."
"Sulu?" Kirk asked his helmsman.
"It wasn't me, captain," Sulu replied, as he pressed buttons.
"Get us back on course, man," Kirk ordered as he walked over and stood at his helmsman's shoulder. He read the instrumentation for himself.
"The ship is not answering helm, sir," Sulu reported. "I'm not in control."
"Jim," Spock said. "The Auxiliary Control room is only a short walk from where the Home Guard boarded the ship."
Kirk dropped into his command chair and flipped a switch: "Auxiliary Control Room, this is the captain, what's going on down there?"
"Well, what d'ye think's going on," a now familiar Scottish voice replied. "You're all doomed!"
Kirk spun his chair to face Crissy: "I don't want to hear one word out of you." He pressed a button. "Security to Auxiliary Control Room." Despite himself, he found himself adding: "All security to Auxiliary Control Room."