One year had passed since the Ambassador-ship left with Carolyn and the K`hmynian delegation. It had been a boring year, a year of sand, silence, and dusty winds. When not being bored, Jonas and Zin had worked together with the research-team of the Northern Kingdom, doing their very best to help them build a efficient and functional spaceship. The Ferengi slaves had been working too, but they lacked the materials needed to craft a truly efficient warp-drive. Propulsion would be slow, it would take several years to reach Ferenginar. In reality, the ship-design they had ended up with was too small for such a long trek. Budgets were limited, even when all three kingdoms collaborated on the project. Jonas missed the sight of other Humans, for here there was none. The closest thing he had to a Human companion on this planet was actually Zin. During the time they had spent together helping out the K`hmynians, Jonas had found out that he had some very odd ideas on everything from food to music to politics - but that was to be expected from an alien.
To begin with, both Jonas and Zin thought their suggestions within ship-design and interior layout would be taken into account, but Yumaar and his scientists had developed ideas of their own already at the beginning of the project, and they had proven to be very stubborn about them. In other words, Jonas had not played the key-role that he had imagined. Never the less, he still felt wholeheartedly that their work here gave a positive contribution to K`hmynian civilization, a civilization that soon would find itself face to face with a ruthless and deadly enemy. Jonas had expected the Klingons to arrive sooner, that there would not be enough time to prepare. Then weeks had turned into months, and months had turned into seasons - still no Klingons. The only efficient ground-to-space weapon they had in their arsenal was the nadium-enriched laser-cannon used by the southern kingdom during the first bombardement. It had taken a lot of convincing to make them share this technology with the other kings, but they had gotten their way eventually. Now - one year later - a dense pattern of huge laser-towers had been erected across the globe. The masses off course, believed this tremendous effort was made in order to evaporate an incoming meteor-storm before it reached the atmosphere. Jonas took pride in knowing that the planet they were about to leave behind was capable of fending off a full-scale Klingon attack. It had to be mentioned though, that it had lead to a total militarization of the K`hmynian economy, and that all three kingdoms had been brought to the brink of financial collapse.
Compared to those ugly towers, the fruits of their labor here was very charming. The space-agencies of the three kingdoms had after lengthy deliberation landed on the name "Koroman Ladder", a name extracted from some ancient fairy-tale they had in common. The Koroman Ladder was a winged vessel that was part plane, part spaceship. The wings and front-section was covered by a layer of nano-tech uptake-filters that channeled oxygen from the air into the combustion-chamber of the primitive hydrogen-burner at the back. This highly original piece of technology allowed the vessel to climb up to a height of twenty kilometers before the oxygen-tank had to plugged in to compensate for the thin air. Two fresh tanks of hydrogen and oxygen awaited them in orbit, together with a completely different propulsion-system that was more suitable for the vacuum of space. What the Koroman Ladder lacked was a proper shuttle-craft that could get people on and off the surface of planets. Jonas and Zin had proposed to solve this problem by expanding the responsibility of their original mission into the K`hmynian venture, taking the Journeyman along with them. Starfleet was uncertain, undoubtedly still pondering long and hard upon the pros & cons of that suggestion.
Meanwhile, Jonas had been busy with a different project. These were turbulent times for the Kingdoms of K`hmary, and Starfleet wanted regular updates on the political situation. So far he had depended heavily upon Yumaar and his science-crew to stay updated on local events. The K`hmynian internet was programmed in a way that made it very hard to squeeze it through the translator-program of his pad. It was a shame really, that the coding was cracked just before departure. But here - finally - it was: K`hmynian internet with English language and Roman letters. So what did it have to tell him?
Jonas typed in the first name of a list of newspapers he wanted to go through, scrolling rapidly through the headlines.
Chamber of ministers denies contact with alien lifeforms on official level
Uhu... That was not the best front-page Yumaar could have hoped for, and those ministers looked stressed out and scared, surrounded as they were by a crowd of journalists that looked more like a pack of hungry wolves. Jonas scrolled past the main text, jumping directly to the next headline:
Royal negotiations ends with deal for nuclear disarmament between all three kingdoms
A lot better, but the road to peace was filled with long and complex words written in tiny letters. Jonas skipped all of them, going directly for the next headline:
Website specialized on UFO-conspiracy-theories closed by Sec-Top taskforce, owner charged with conspiracy against the King
So the snowball was indeed rolling, getting bigger and heavier on its way down the mountain. One thing was the Journeyman, who had been spotted all over the kingdom on that faithful trip one year earlier, the other was all those servants and public officials who had leaked confidential stuff about their existence to the press. Jonas sighed, dwelling on the headline for a few seconds before jumping to the next:
Elite university-group questions official story behind last years meteor shower
Okay... So Yumaar was fucked, on several levels that was. The next headline was even worse:
Prince Yumaar marries today! Join the festivities! See the colors! Carnival in Thronar!
Angry press, suspicious investigators closing in on him from several different angles, hideous girlfriend forced on him by dictator-dad. And still: a flicker of light shone a narrow path through these dark and desperate times. His ship was ready, but would he grasp the lifebuoy they had made for him? Or would he stay on the surface, boldly facing the challenges ahead?
Jonas turned off his pad and put it face down on the desk. He was sitting within the captains ready-room, a small retreat normally reserved - as the name implied - for the captain. Jonas was not the captain on this ship, he was not supposed to be there. Within Starfleet-vessels, micro-chips sewed into the uniforms worked as keys who denied those without the right uniforms access. Yumaar however, had insisted on a more tech-free environment, and he had made the space-agencies listen to his ideas. The interior of the ship mimicked that of an ancient submarine, right down to the manual doors. All of them were built to block fires and explosions when shut, so it took a lot of force to push them open. It was a good thing they closes them selves though, they were built with a slightly slanted angle that made gravity do the job. Had it been up to Yumaar, they would have dropped that one too - it was his own scientists that had insisted on gravity-plating.
On his way to the bridge, Jonas passed through the cramped bunks were the K`hmynian crew dwelled. The one for the crew came first, then the one for the bridge-officers. There were eight of each category, so the rooms each held the same number of beds. They were organized into two stacks of four at both sides of the pathway. - Could things get any more minimalistic? Jonas treasured what little privacy he had, so it was a good thing the shuttle-bay on the floor above had space enough to carry the Journeyman within it. Yumaar had another lander ready, but it would never the less be bad news if starfleet took it away from them. The K`hmynian vessel used the same type of primitive hydrogen-oxygen burner that the mothership used to reach orbit, so it would deplete its fuel-supply on a single trip to a 1-G surface. Their ability to explore would be very limited, to say the least.
D`Jumo - one of the nobels who had joined Yumaar on his trip to Nibulus 6 - was the only man on the bridge when Jonas entered.
"Turn on the TV, will you?" Jonas asked D`Jumo.
His little blue hands pushed through a few menus in rapid succession. A moving picture materialized in front of the dessert runway, gradually densifying until it blocked the view completely. At the upper right corner, four dense and thick K`hmynian letters could be seen. Jonas thought it looked a bit like Sanskrit, it had the same types of loops and curves. He understood neither off course, but Yumaar had told him that the four letter-logo was a abridgment for "Northern Royal Broadcasting Service" - whatever that might sound like in Northern K`hmynian.
"This is the Xlux-temple in the capital" D`Jumo told him, pointing at the image displayed.
The word "Xlux" might have had some meaning, but the translator failed to convey it, so it slipped by the earplug unprocessed. It would off course have been best to learn proper K`hmynian rather than to always rely on the computer-generated sounds of the earplug. Unfortunately, Jonas knew even before trying that he lacked the patience and interest needed to do so. If anyone, Carolyn should return with a anthropology-crew one day and put K`hmynian culture and language under the magnifying-glass. Jonas imagined that she would go about it with intense devotion and great skill, it was a pity for anthropology that Kirk had demanded her return to the Enterprise. To take a more positive outlook, Jonas was very happy that he had been able to maintain contact with her on subspace. The Enterprise was still going strong on it's five-year mission of exploration, jumping from one action-filled adventure to the next. Among the more noteworthy, Carolyn had encountered both a million year old robot, and a powerful entity that claimed it was a Greek god named "Adonais". Jonas felt honored to be given a peak into these events before everyone else. The complete logs of exploration-missions like that of the Enterprise was as a rule not opened to the public before several years after completion, and rumors said that starfleet edited away anything sensitive.
"Looks good" Jonas replied, about a minute after D`Jumo had told him the name of the temple. His mind had been clogged with Carolyn, Enterprise, and a dozen other topics.
The camera filming the event made a sweep across the temple-floor from its elevated position. A huge crowd had gathered there, and everyone wore their best and most formal clothing. It was pretty chaotic compared to the churches Jonas was used to at home. Back there, everybody were sitting quietly in orderly rows of forward-pointing benches, like in a lecture-hall or before a shuttle-launch. This seemed more like a market place, main difference being that there were no stands,
"So where is the bride?" Jonas wondered.
"She's not a pretty sight, if that's what you are wondering about" D`Jumo warned.
"Yumaar have told me a million times already, unfortunately I have been to buried in work to check it up my self"
Jonas paid attention to the screen as it zoomed in on the guests. Most of them were northern nobles, but there were also some representatives from the higher strata of the commercial classes present. Back on Earth it could be difficult to spot a persons status without talking to him, but here on K`hmary, each of the main social classes and their numerous sub-divisions had their own unique dress-code with outfits for both weekdays and festivities. The system of garments, shapes and patterns that they had evolved was very well-ordered, and yet it was not easy to grasp for a foreigner. What he had understood, was that in events like this, northern Nobles always wore single-colored tunics in a fine silk-like material. The color was up to their personal choosing, so the possibility to express personal taste was bigger than for most of the other classes.
Then the image shifted to a different angle, much closer to the ground. From this new position, one could see into the cave-like extension that was dug into the wall at the end of the hall. The cave-entrance started by a platform that stood two meters up from the main floor, so the camera still overlooked the sea of babbling blue heads with good margin. The lofty interior was filled with the sound of K`hmynian chattering, and the temple itself increased it by trapping the exotic sounds, making them bounce back and forth between the massive walls. Both nobles and merchants it seemed, had a lot to talk about. Being of religious origin, the elegant wall-paintings on the walls portrayed various events and characters from those stories within K`hmynian folklore who involved gods and demons. None of the images were familiar to Jonas, and this reminded him about just how lazy he had been when it came to study K`hmynian culture.
The camera zoomed in on two K`hmynians silhouettes who had appeared within the dim shaft that stretched into the cave-like funnel. They were heading towards the open hall, gradually becoming more illuminated as they stepped towards the platform. Jonas had a strong hunch about who those two were. The one on the right side was definitely female, now that they had come a bit closer one could clearly see her feminine curves. Those didn't look too bad, not too bad at all - not to Human eyes anyway. This observation only served to make Jonas even was curious, because according to Yumaar she was the ugliest woman in the universe. As the silhouettes continued their approach towards the platform, more details became visible. The wife - Amblenia, wasn't that her name? - had a large fluffy skirt that ended in a more body-tight blouse above her round hips. Yumaar wore the same type of tunic as most of the guests did, main difference being that it had a rather dense and complicated pattern woven into it. But it was still too dark to see their faces... Jonas leaned forward in his chair, eagerly anticipating the moment were they walked into the revealing light. The moment arrived, and it was not a pretty sight.
"God damn! She's ugly!"
Stunningly, shockingly, extremely, ridiculously... Hideous. Words could not really describe how the overgrown jaw, the sharp, outstanding chin, the long, bumpy nose, the weirdly deformed forehead, the thin, wispy hair... All of it acted together in a perfect disharmony were each negative trait amplified the other. The one positive attribute the soon-to-be-princess did have, was that she looked rather happy. Her chapped lips formed a crooked smile, and her sunken eyes radiating with joy.
"Does it go in the family, this appearance?" Jonas whispered, amazed and scared by the scarecrow on the screen.
"I Don't know really, I have never been acquainted with the Zipowes" D`Jumo replied, more puzzled than appalled by the view.
"Because if it does, I have a thing or two to teach you K`hmynians about inbreeding" Jonas said between two deep breaths.
"Don't underestimate us!" D`Jumo snapped back, obviously offended by the notion of them not understanding basic biology.
"Only joking" Jonas hastily replied, eager to repair the damage.
"Apology accepted" D`Jumo responded, still sounding angry.
As the priest, shaman, templar - whatever they called them - walked up on the platform, Yumaar looked as if he was about to collapse. His body was all sunken together, his eyes wandering frenetically about the room in desperate search for a place to to hide. It was kind of painful to see him standing there, looking like a shy animal that had been kidnapped from the wilderness to be put under public scrutiny within a cage that that was way to small. The holy man started with some sort of ceremonial gibberish, Jonas failed to extract any clear meaning from the words. The ending however, sounded oddly familiar:
"You may now kiss the bride"
The moment of doom... Jonas could not help smiling, a evil little grin that he could easily forgive himself, knowing that Yumaar was in no physical danger. The prince was cornered, he had no place to run. Amblenia leaned forward, her cracked lips forming a pout that yearned towards intimate contact with him. The camera zoomed in on them, the close up revealed several strands of thin hairs that stood up from Amblenia's upper lip.
"Oh my!"
Even though he was at safe distance, Jonas froze in terror. Would it really happen? It was too painful to watch, he shut his eyes as hard as he could. He did not dare to open them again before the sound of thundering applause reached his ears. Knowing that the worst part was over, Yumaar walked down the aisle with a more relaxed look on his face. D`Jumo thought he had seen enough and turned off the TV.
"So what do you think?" Jonas asked him.
"I think the next hours will be nerve-wracking. If Yumaar decide to stay and sort things out, I will be captain. If he goes with us, I will just be one out of many console-operators"
"We will just have to wait and see, don't we?"
"I will summon you to the bridge if he calls" D`Jumo assured him.
Jonas headed out of the bridge and climbed up to the room were the journeyman-explorer stood parked. Yumaar had built his ship dense and cramped, so there was barely enough space for it. A thick wall separated this room from the one containing the Ferengi-prisoners. This section of the ship was basically just a large container with mattresses and some furniture scattered around its mostly empty floor-space. The container didn't stretch all the way to the fuel-tanks at the back, its roof met the floor in a downwards slope half-way to the engine-section - it looked very smooth and organic when viewed from an exterior position. The K`hmynian team looked upon the Ferengies as a threat to ship-security, so the big door behind the Journeyman had been bolted shut. - Food and water was to be delivered through a slide carved into it. Jonas did not share their concern on this matter, the few and short dialogs he had had with the Ferengies had left him with the impression that they were non-violent business-people. Talking to them was actually very odd, like a blast from the past. On Earth, concepts like profit, stocks and private enterprises had been dumped in the trash-bin of history centuries ago. But the Ferengies? The Ferengies treated them as sacred relics that demanded worship. For some reason they had made a economic system - an economic system which was flimsy and unstable, and for that reason rarely found even on pre-warp planets - the foundation of their entire culture and identity. And now they went around space bargaining, haggling, buying, selling and cheating. To begin with Jonas had found them fun people to chat with, but after a while it just felt exhausting and empty.
The ladder from the first floor continued up the wall, all the way to to the ceiling. There was a hatch there, were one could walk up on the roof. It went almost without saying, that this hatch had to be locked very tight when out in space. It was hard work to turn and twist all the wheels and handles needed to open it, specially while balancing on a ladder. Truth to be told, Jonas had no idea why this hatch was even there. They already had an airlock on the first floor, so what did they need a extra hatch for? Whatever the reason, it felt good to climb back into bright daylight. The slight breeze was perfect, just enough to freshen up the hot air.
The dessert-floor stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. It was a carpet of dark and dirty yellow - completely barren, completely lifeless. It had been a year without rain, and also a year without sun. The sky was illuminated from above, but the sun itself could never be seen through the endless stream of clouds. It was no coincidence that the kings had chosen this specific spot as a hideout for their alien visitors. Nobody had any reason to be here, except the army that was. According to Yumaar this dessert had once been the testing-ground for the most destructive weapons their scientists were able to conjure up. This era of big explosions and mighty fireworks was abruptly ended when the Klingons destroyed the military-base. All that remained now was a huge crater at the left end of the runway. Compared to the military city that had once been, the barracks set up for the K`hmynian engineering-crew on the other side were small and mundane. Both the barracks and the Ferengi prison-complex next to it could fit a hundred times inside the mighty crater. Now that they finally were heading back into open space, Jonas asked himself if he was going to miss it. The answer was no - it had been too monotone, too few new faces and new challenges. The sunsets had been nice though, if Yumaar waited a few hours more to give his response, he might get to see one more.
Then Zin popped up from the hatch, carrying with him two cans of K`hmynian beer. He sat down beside Jonas and handed him one of them. It was sweet, just like everything else K`hmynian. Why did those idiots insist on drowning every single taste they made with sugar? Having asked this question, Jonas counted himself lucky for having synthesizers with human recipes on the Journeyman.
"I for one miss Bolian dishes, everything you Humans make is so annoyingly fresh and new" Zin argued when Jonas shared these thoughts with him.
"Ah, I have forgotten. You Bolians want everything you eat to be rotten and filled with worms, isn't that it?" Despite not enjoying it, Jonas took another sip of his beer.
While he struggled to get it down, he came to think back on the the day they first met back on Outpost 32. Right after introducing himself, Zin had tried to introduce him to Bolian cooking by handing him a cup of fatty icecream with dead worms in it.
"Actually, our scientists are surprised you Humans don't share our appetite for matured food. Your scientists claim early Humans were scavengers, just like us" Zin answered.
"But your wildlife is much bigger and stronger than ours, so it was much easier for us to kill our own food, once we invented spears and bows" Jonas pointed out.
"So you are saying the Human scavenger-period was to short to leave a genetic imprint"
"Precisely. And one also have to consider the amount of food left behind. If a Bolian dinarius-dront kills off a Bolian... whats the name again? Those big grazers with the flat beaks and eight legs?" Jonas asked.
"Pontosaur" Zin reminded him.
"Exactely! Pontosaur. When the dront have stuffed itself with Ponto-meat, and waddles away from the blood-soaked crime-scene, there will still be five-hundred kiloes or so of meat left"
"Keep in mind that the early Bolians would be chased away by the Chulu-bird"
"Well yeah, but those are pretty huge as well - and they are fiercely territorial. So when the single Chulu-bird in the area has left, there is still two-hundred kiloes of meat left. On Earth the leftovers are smaller, and the competing species of scavengers come in groups. Thus it was better for the early Humans to become hunters them selves"
"Point well made"
Meanwhile, the sun started to drop beyond the flat horizon. The sky turned dark orange, then blood-red. The vivid colors created a majestic, grand scenery that one never got completely accustomed to. Zin and Jonas had rounded off their biology-dispute just in time to fully enjoy it. Their foul-tasting beers were finished without further comments, then they walked back into the ship and closed the hatch.
D`Jumo was still sitting at his post in the bridge. Nothing had changed since their last encounter, there was still no sound from Yumaar.
"I'm getting tired of waiting" Jonas gruffed while dropping into one of the empty seats.
"Me too" D`Jumo agreed.
Then somebody called Jonas on his communicator. As he picked it up, he was surprised to see that it was not Yumaar. It was some Starfleet-officer, calling from Starbase 82
"Be right back" He mumbled while heading back into the corridor, away from the always curious ears of D`Jumo. When he let the caller through, a dry and bureaucrat-like voice introduced itself on the other end:
"This is lieutenant Corey calling on behalf of Admiral Sherling, chief of sector 82"
"Ensign Jonas McDonald here" Jonas replied.
"Good. I call to inform that you have a green light on your request to expand your mission. Your new objective is to bring the Ferengies safe to Ferenginar, and introduce yourself to the local authorities on behalf of Starfleet. Make sure they understand who we are, and try to learn as much about them while being there. Your secondary priority is to assist the K`hmynian mission"
"Excellent! Good day sir"
This was music to his ears, exactly what he had hoped for. He returned to the bridge with a huge grin on his face. Zin followed him with his eyes as he walked through the door, interpreting his expression correctly.
"Starfleet approved?" He wondered.
"Yes!" Jonas screamed in ecstasy while making a joyful little jump.
"And the journeyman? Can we keep it?" Zin asked.
"He didn't mention it, so I say we run away with it before they change their mind"
Having said this, Jonas walked up to the windshield up front. He leaned over the slanted front-board with a dreamy look on his face.
"To boldly goo..." He whispered while looking at the endless runway that stretched beyond the horizon.
"Where no K`hmynian or Starfleet employee have gone before" Zin added, finishing the sentence.
A new caller demanded their attention, but this time the beeping flowed from somewhere within the communications-board. Due to the old-school style of the ship, neither of the panels were equipped with the touch-sensitive screens Zin and Jonas were used to operate. It was all switchboards - huge buttons in all the colors of the rainbow. This low-tech appearance was done intentionally. Jonas had spotted touch-sensitive panels on everything from helicopter-cockpits to aircondition-systems during his stay, so it could not be beyond their capabilities to install them in starships as well.
D`Jumo got up and dumped back down into the seat adjunct to the beeping work-station.
"It better be Yumaar" He said while pushing the button that let the caller through.
It made a loud click when he squeezed it down - very charming. It was as if a hatch was opened manually to let the sound through.
"Are you good to go?" Yumaar's familiar voice asked them from within the box.
"Yes sir, the Ferengies have been moved into the new cell, the fuel-tanks are full, and the supplies are laden" D`Jumo reported proudly.
"Very well. You see, you guys are in a hurry" Yumaar said, suddenly sounding very serious.
"Care to elaborate?" D`Jumo requested.
"Private researchers have busted the whole alien-deal, and now a mob of journalists are heading your way in search of extraterrestrial life!"
"Wow, we stink at keeping secrets, don't we?" D`Jumo said with a wry smile on his lips.
He didn't seem to be take this whole hush-hush mess nearly as serious as Yumaar and his dad did.
"We sure do" Yumaar reluctantly agreed.
"Flee or fight?" D`Jumo asked.
"If you let the journalists assault you, the venture will be postponed indefinitely, and I want to keep the deal with the Ferengies. You must go now!" The prince ordered.
"Okay, good luck with everything. I will see you in a year or two"
"Good luck to you too"
Yumaar hung up on them, the button sprung back up with another loud click.
"That was dramatic" Jonas commented.
"The prince is in deep shit, things are not going his way" D`Jumo opined.
Then he leaned slowly back in his chair, scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner.
"I suggest we follow his instructions and leave in a hurry?" Zin urged them, scared by the idea of being trapped and surrounded by a gang of media-bullies on a truth-crusade.
"But where are the rest of the bridge officers?" Jonas wondered.
"Relax, I will call them" D`Jumo reassured them while squeezing a red button that sounded some sort of alarm.
The click of the button was immediately followed by an artificial howling which summoned the rest of the gang at impressively short notice. Zin and Jonas were ousted from their seats by the newcomers and refitted into the elevated observer-platforms at either side of the entrance. Here they would not be in anybodies way, while still having a good overview of the bridge and windshield. D`Jumo and Tux were the only ones from Yumaar`s trip to Nibulus 6 that had been singled out for this journey. Together they formed the Northern third of the bridge-crew, two out of six blueheads who were dressed in one-piece uniforms with yellow and black stripes. Jonas thought they resembled a bunch of bees, the combination of those idiotic uniforms and the antennas on their heads made them a somewhat awkward sight - the only thing missing to make their costumes complete were pairs of insect-wings sewed on to their backs. But this was the latest fashion on K`hmary, and he had to respect that.
D`Jumo had taken position by the captains-seat in the middle, but before he seated himself and buckled up, he wanted to say a few words to his crew:
"Ladies and gentlemen. We are leaving a bit early. Yumaar is not joining us. I expect every crewmember to do his very best. Today we write history."
The short and somewhat staccato speech was finished almost before it had begun. D`Jumo dropped into his seat, everybody fastened their seat-belts.
In order to save as much fuel as possible, the massive plane was pushed forward by electrified rails built into the runway. If Jonas had understood the system correctly, it was very similar to the way a rail-gun accelerated a bullet. The low and gentle humming from the electrical engine was completely out of sync with the rapid acceleration that pushed all of them hard into their seats, almost knocking the air out of their lungs in the process. The needle on the old-fashioned speedometer started rotating, climbing quickly towards the one-thousand kilometer mark at the high-point of the circular disc behind it. When it passed it and started its decent, the wings had all the lift they needed to get them airborne, but the ship was locked into the rails by the very same magnets who provided the brutal shove. They charged forward faster and faster, breaking the sound-barrier with a massive bang while still glued to the ground. The dessert that rushed past them seemed to transform itself, turning into a liquid stream of yellow and gray. Then the stream turned into a unreal looking tunnel that seemed completely separated from the room they sat in. Even the clouds moved swiftly past them, despite hanging a kilometer above the ground.
"These low-tech solutions are so much fun!" Zin whispered towards Jonas, half-fearing that the K`hmynians would be offended if the translator-plugs attached to their ears picked it up.
"I will treasure this moment" Jonas whispered in awe, his mouth half-open. His eyes stayed glued to the breathtaking scenery unfolding outside. They were heading straight into the still brilliantly vivid and colorful sunset, a most fitting beginning for what he hoped would be an epic adventure.
The end of the runway appeared on the horizon, leaping right at them. Jonas gasped in shock, overwhelmed by an instinctive fear of crashing head-first into the sand. The rails stopped a millisecond before the runway did, they broke free from the concrete-underlay with a powerful upward jerk that slammed them hard into their seats. For a split second Jonas felt as a falling rock, but this most terrible sensation ended when the hydrogen burner at the back came to his rescue - just as they had planned it. As it started its thundering roar, the snout of the ship turned skywards in a slow and steady movement that ended when they had reached an angle of about thirty degrees. The ship was too massive and heavy to shake, its trajectory was controlled and friction-free. The hydrogen-burner managed to maintain their speed through the thickest part of the atmosphere, they did not accelerate further before they had broken through the clouds. The blue sky thinned out, turning into a white haze that eventually dissolved into black space.
They had reached orbit.
The hydrogen tank and its auxiliary oxygen-chambers were at this point completely depleted, and the engine itself had turned into a potentially lethal red-glowing ball of metal that they better get rid of before the heat spread itself over to the main hull - turning it weak and molten. D`Jumo updated the others on his progress as he unbolted these spent parts and shot them out and away from the ship.
"You can let go of your safety-belts now" He then said.
The gravitational pull of K`hmary had lost its grasp on them, so the once they loosened their restraints, they floated out of their seats.
"From here it will be quite a lot of waiting around, in an hour or so we will dock with the orbital station that will replace our engine" Tux informed them.
The replacement itself would take several hours of hard work, a complex task in which Zin and Jonas had no role to play. Instead of hanging around, they decided to pass the time by taking a little runabout among the other planets in the system.
"So where to?" Zin wondered while Jonas pushed the Journeyman away from the mothership.
"I want to see the inner planets, we have still not checked them out"
"Good idea"
Jonas set the course without further discussion. Then he engaged the impulse engines and leaned back in his seat.
The Koroman Ladder shrunk rapidly away behind them, the gray world that had fostered it followed closely behind. Half way to the third planet in the system, the automated sensor-system made a series of surprising discoveries that made it widen its scan of the planet and its surroundings. In general it was considered a bad idea to rush into complex scenarios blindly, so Jonas slowed down to almost a full stop in order to let the scanner-array complete its work. The planet in question was framed in by a ring of asteroids, quite commonplace indeed. The same could not be said however, about the cloud of metal shrapnel that orbited its outer perimeter. And the planet itself was even weirder. - Iron... lots of it, to say the least. They had to get closer to find out exactly how deep the iron-crust went, but a lethal danger stood in their way: Two birds of prey rested within the cloud of shrapnel. Even in a weakened state, the Journeyman was no match for these killer-machines. Jonas feared that the scanner-signals could be traced back to him, so he shut down the array before it got started on a more thorough analysis. Instead of hurling more radio and sub-space frequencies at them, he tried to get as much as possible out of the the telescope-camera - a more subtle and stealthy approach. Going to maximum zoom, he could see that the metal shrapnel was made up from artificially crafted plates that were jagged, twisted and burnt by what must have been a series of violent explosions. Interesting, but when? - that was the next question in line. Thermo-imaging might give a clue, so he switched the camera into this mode. The resulting images did indeed make him wiser. Large parts of the field showed up white, but the asteroid-ring inside it was all orange. This meant that the debris-field held a temperature much higher than what the Nibulus-sun could delivers at this distance.
He was looking at a fresh battle-scene, no doubt about it. Going back to normal camera, Jonas then aimed in on the two enemy ships. One of the Klingon birds had a big and round cannon sticking out beneath the rear end. The long barrel ran all the way to the snout, it was fastened securely to the underside of the ship by a line of boxy suspenders. This most unusual add-on ruined the streamlined design completely. Jonas had never seen a Klingon ship with this type of weaponry, his instincts urged him to scan it - indulge his curiosity - but rational thinking screamed a loud no. There was too much at stake here, so instead of putting himself in mortal danger, he turned the ship around and retreated rapidly away from the third planet and its many mysteries.
"Our friends have returned" He commented when they were at safe distance.
"We live to explore another day" Zin said
"We must warn D`Jumo about this" Jonas concluded.
Their detour had in fact been most fortunate, cause the third planet had been the first place the K`hmynians had wanted to put under scrutiny. The primitive nuke-cannon that Yumaar had equipped his first ship with had been removed in favor of micro-version of the more advanced nadium-spiced laser that the southerners had used against the Klingon bombardment. This weapon was quite weak in the eyes of a starfleet officer like Jonas, who thought of it more as a multi-purpose tool. Due to its combination of precision and flexibility, it could be utilized for a huge variety of tasks. Fighting of Klingon Birds of Prey however, was not one of them.
Ten minutes later, Zin and Jonas were standing in front of the large, chess-like arrangement that functioned as star-chart on board Yumaar's ship. The many pieces on the table symbolized stars and important planets on nearby systems. The ship-icon was stuck in the exact center of the board, but the rest could be moved manually. Their positions were at all times to be based on numbers that were spit out by a narrow calculator-screen built into the wall, - but why so primitive? The answer was to be found within their electricity-grid. The fusion-planet was dedicated exclusively to the warp-drive, and since the rest of the ship was driven by a solar-panel that was folded out like a sail on top of the ship, the number of electricity-draining applications had been reduced to an absolute minimum. The rational reason was a need to preserve energy in order to not deplete their primitive batteries and freeze to death while traversing the darkness of deep space, but Jonas didn't buy this explanation. His theory was that Yumaar, the space-agencies - whoever was responsible - believed that manual labor was important for the moral of the crew. The batteries could definitely have been made bigger or better, and absolutely everything on board was done manually. The heavy doors had to be open and closed by hand, and none of the floors or walls had auto-cleaning nano-bots built into them. Every single one of the pear-shaped light-bulbs that stuck out from strategic places along the ceiling was connected to a switch that had turned on and off manually. There was no sensor-detection anywhere, not even on the heaters. The crew had to adjust the radiators... Manually. Cooking? - Manually. Washing clothes? Manually.
Everything... happened... Manually.
Jonas expected to go insane from all the switches and wheels he had to turn to get through the day, but at least the K`hmynians would score originality-points within the intergalactic community. The captain of every ship they met on their way to Ferenginar would rub his eyes and scratch his forehead, questioning the validity of the incredible schematics delivered by his scanner-array. Their minimalistic electricity-grid - or lack of it, to be more precise - could be described with such words as "exotic" "curious" and "interesting", and the same could actually be said about the stuff going on at their manual star-chart. The seven closest stars to Nibulus formed a circle around it, but according to plan they would only explore one of them before heading deeper into the Milkyway, where the Ferengies claimed their homeworld was located. The K`hmynian scientists had found what they called a "K`hmary-like" planet here - meaning that it was temperated, had a thick atmosphere, and normal gravity. Unfortunate as it was, the Klingons were blocking their way. Following Zin's warning, the two enemy ships had been set up as red circles on the manual star-chart. Two pieces of magnetic cardboard shaped as rockets had been placed within each O, that way marking the danger-zones as the result of alien activity.
"We can not go straight on, and to circle around them will drain too much of fuel" D`Jumo thought out loud.
"What about Cube Starbase?" Jonas suggested.
Yumaar had been so eager to go there he literary jumped through the roof when they had first discovered it on the Federation star-chart Zin had borrowed him. D`Jumo had been informed about it later, when they went through all the possible stops on their trip. Jonas could not remember whether or not he had voiced any opinion on it, but was this not an excellent excuse for a detour?
"You can say hello to your closest neighbors in space, and probably buy some more hydrogen" Zin elaborated.
"Excellent idea! onwards to Cube Starbase!" D`Jumo agreed without any hesitation.
The whole crew followed his lead as he strode towards the bridge with unwavering resolution.
"To boldly go!" Jonas screamed joyfully.
"Where no starshirt or K`hmynian have gone before!" Zin tallied in with equal enthusiasm.
The adventure continued.