PATTERNS OF INVASION

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 3

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE: 2634.9. After pushing our own engines at Warp Eight for several hours, the USS ENTERPRISE, nearly depleted of phaser energy and completely emptied of photon torpedoes, due to the one-against-many combative encounter that had occurred just outside 61 Cygni, our stellar destination, against Nazi starships! To be more precise, they were Ekosian starships, based upon an accidentally left-behind hand phaser a solar year earlier. But as their tyrannical leader, Führer Melakon, whom we thought shot dead by a Zeon named Isak, held tightly to the reins of ravenous power…he managed to mimic and mass-produce starships with primitive phased energy cannons. And had evidently decided the time was right to take their tyranny beyond their twin-inhabited system we had dubbed M34. Unfortunately, for not only the Federation but the ENTERPRISE as well, they were far too potentially deadly for a single, solitary starship to take on. Therefore I had ordered my crew to take us at maximum space-warp speed to the nearest Starfleet starbase for swift assistance. I can only hope that it's not a case of too little…too late.

"Establish contact with Starbase 13, Uhura," Captain James T. Kirk quickly commanded of his singularly lovely communications officer even as the mushroom-shaped duranium-metal starbase, with the huge figures "13" stenciled impossibly large onto its umbrella-like top section with the more cylindrical section, fully two-thirds of the sitting-in-space super-structure, gradually grew in the viewscreen of the thrusters-only traveling vessel.

"Contact made, Captain," Lt. Nyota Uhura replied while simultaneously listening via the silvery earpiece to a wide variety of incoming normal-space transmissions before readily adding, "starbase commander, Commodore Cameron Trent, coming on screen, sir."

Slowly standing, as Kirk quickly considered how weary, emotionally as well as physically, he truly turned out to be since executing the better part of valor several hours before…

"Commodore Trent, sir," said Kirk with a quick half-bow of his head, even as the agitated image of a middle-aged man, considerably older than Captain Kirk!, wearing a similarly-colored command tunic whose sleeve braids, the Captain instinctively knew, held significantly more solid gold than his own. "On behalf of myself and my crew, I'd like to extend our thanks for…"

"Never mind the pleasantries, Captain Kirk," snapped a tensed-up Trent, a command-grade officer who'd never even been an active part of the bridge of a Constitution-class starship, let alone embroiled in battle, "just tell us what the hell's going on out there! Your message said something about…Nazi vessels? This is the Twenty-Third Century, you know!"

"I'll have my complete log transmitted right away, Commodore, but I must once again stress the desperate need for as many operational starships as can be quickly congregated! We don't have very much time before…!"

"Now hold it right there, Kirk!" nastily interjected Commodore Trent with more than a little insulting tension to both tone and countenance. "I didn't rise to the rank of Commodore in charge of an entire starbase by flying off the handle at the first sign of…!"

"Just allow the ENTERPRISE to enter and dock in one of the bigger bays of Starbase 13, sir," insisted a less-than-gracious Captain Kirk, no longer leaning toward typical procedural protocols. "While my ship undergoes cursory repairs and a restocking of photon torpedoes as well as the re-energizing of all phaser banks, I'll be more than content to listen to whatever you have to say. Agreed?"

Clearly listening to the advise of some lesser officer not in the viewscreen's visual, Commodore Trent tersely replied, "I expect you and your top officers to come to Level One and report, personally, to me in my centrally-located office, Kirk! Trent out."

Even as the signal was severed by starbase communications, the gradually growing image of Starbase 13's larger umbrella-like levels filled the screen, even as the outer metal doors of one of several exceptionally large starship-sized docking bays were promptly opening, Kirk commented curtly while still standing before his center seat.

"Just our luck…we've got a systems-wide situation with Nazi starships and this greenhorn's hell-bent on doing things by the book. Mr. Spock…Mr. Scott…come with me to the main transporter room so we can beam over as soon as possible. Lt. Uhura, advise Dr. McCoy to meet us there."

No sooner had Commander Spock, Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Scott, and Kirk stepped past swiftly parting turbolift doors than Uhura touch-activated the exact control of her console station to establish an instant intercom connection to sickbay on Deck Five.

Meanwhile, still several light-years distant from Starbase 13, the more sluggishly traveling, at a relativistic velocity of Warp Factor Five, many, many, many times slower than the geometrically accumulative velocities reached at Warp Eight…meaning an approximated relativistic speed-difference of 553-billion kilometers-per-hour as compared to a more meager 135-billion kilometers-per-hour.

"Colonel," reported a black-garbed Gestapo officer from the far less proficient, and technically more primitive, version of a combination helm and navigations console, as the illusory display of stars streaking past at speeds seemingly 125 times faster than the speed-of-light through normal space, while the ENTERPRISE had seemingly streaked away at 512 times faster, "although our less efficient sensor scans have lost the space-warped trail of the USS ENTERPRISE, out current course does take us within attack range of yet another Federation world."

"Excellent, Lieutenant," answered a smug, yet still desperate to please his superior, Führer Melakon, Col. Ethok from the crude command chair in the heart of the significantly less spacious non-circular bridge deck. "Take us into orbital limits and arrange for some of our best phase-rifle armed soldiers to take a shuttlecraft down in order to commence concentrated occupation of whatever sub-Ekosian race is there. Leave one, and only one, Ekosian starship behind to destroy most the planet's surface to quell potential populace opposition."

"Yes, Colonel, sir!"

Even as the ebony-uniformed officer operated the combination of helm and navigations to quickly and obediently comply, the helmeted soldier in the gray-green uniform off to one side of the octagonal-arranged claustrophobic bridge proceeded in passing on, via ship-to-ship subspace communicative connections, the Colonel's ambitious blueprint for bloody domination of their third, thus far, non-Ekosian planet set for destruction and/or concentrated occupation since striking out at meager multi-warp speeds from system M34.

"Wh-what do you m-mean to d-do, Colonel?" nervously asked Ambassador Trellius of the humanoid inhabitants with definite feather-hair from a planet already partially laid waste by starships and soldiers scant hours before. "Do y-you m-mean to savagely attack them as you have d-done to my planet and people?"

"Of course, Ambassador Trellius," answered a still-smirking Nazi SS officer in basic black even as this colorfully, though still business-like, clothed political person of, to such as this Ekosian Colonel, inferior racial stock stood at phased pistol-point nearby.

"Such is the only reason these starships were swiftly constructed by Zeon slaves. And such was the reason we struck out at the USS ENTERPRISE to, in essence, chase them away, while leaving the bulk of Federation space at our not-so-tender mercy, Ambassador. Ekos, lead by our assassination-surviving Führer, is destined to establish total control over all formerly Federation planets and peoples! Those we do not destroy shall service our Master Race."

"Though Ch'Lonn Three has only been a member-world of the United Federation of Planets for a little more than two years," said Trellius with the first non-stammering-with-abject-terror tone than she had spoken in since the wholesale slaughter of billions on her planet as well as her brutal abduction, "we know enough about their Starfleet Command to know that such as you shall be destroyed utterly before more billions fall!"

"We shall see."

A quick black leather gloved hand-signal from the still-seated, superiority complex minded Col. Ethok, and the phased pistol-toting gray-green uniformed soldier with the W.W.II-type Nazi helmet roughly dragged Ambassador Trellius to one shadowy side and…

"Noo—"

Fzzzzt!

Thud!

Yes," sardonically said Col. Ethok beneath his breath while looking, again, at the illusory display of FTL-streaking stars on the smaller-than-ENTERPRISE's viewscreen. "We shall see. But not you, my dear dead Ambassador. Not you. Ha, hahaha!"

END OF CHAPTER 3