I do not claim any characters from the Trek Universe, and am only using any named herein to tell a story meant for entertainment purposes only.
Star Trek: Lost Mare
2
"It's her," Lt. Spiros shouted from the communications station, shattering the stiff silence on the bridge. "I've got her signal."
"Thank God," Ben rasped as he swung his chair toward the communications post.
"Where the hell has she been," Andrea Meyers growled.
"She's requesting immediate transport," the communications officer reported as he held up a three-fingered hand to silence Andrea Meyers. The muscular security chief accepted it, but let her expression speak for her.
"She says she is alone, but in danger of imminent discovery," Lt. Dorothy Spiros told them.
"Transport, now," Ben decided as he nodded to the officer.
A moment later, they heard the shrill whine of klaxons as an intruder alert went off throughout the ship.
"What the hell happened," Ben shouted as Andrea barked demands into her own communication link.
"We have a native on board," Lt. Meyers reported to the captain as she checked the console before her. "Two of them, in fact. But no doctor. We missed Helen!"
"Meyers, you're with me," Ben snapped at the security chief. "Anderson," he yelled back at the navigator. "Keep our course steady, and our holographic distortion emitter online. You have the bridge. Spiros, see if you can find Helen again!"
"Yes, sir," the commander at navigation nodded as he instinctively rechecked the holographic image emitter that disguised their ship as just one more asteroid in the belt of rubble widely orbiting the planet below.
With Andrea Meyers at his side, Ben left the bridge, and headed for transporter room four with security team members forming at his side.
ST
Dr. Marcan looked around him with wide, brown eyes rounded in genuine fear and alarm as he pressed back into a corner of the transport chamber. Just in front of him, the young filly stood babbling an odd language to the equally strange creatures that stood near the energetic barrier now surrounding them.
He had been suspicious when the young filly had so obviously recognized the pouch, only to deny it as her own. Or at least she tried to shed doubt. Yet she obviously wanted it. Badly. She was quite easy to read. As if she knew nothing of body language, or how to control it.
He chose to leave her alone, and observe her in secret through the room's observation port to see what she revealed. When she opened the pouch, and pulled out a peculiar looking device, he thought at first she might be a spy. Then she began that odd, babbling grunting she was using now, and the room began to glow around her a moment later.
Still uncertain of what exactly was going on, he raced back to the room hoping to stop her before she could set off some dangerous weapon. Even as he rushed to her side, he only had time to meet her eyes as she looked up at him in genuine alarm before they both seemed to fade away for a moment.
Then, as if merely blinking, they reappeared in this odd chamber where three strange-looking humanoids of varying sizes and shapes began to babble all at once as an annoying, shrill wail filled the air, tormenting his ears. The mare had looked at him as she clambered to her feet, still clad only in her hospital gown, and clutching the scorched pouch in one hand, the odd instrument still in her other hand.
"Don't worry," she had told him, and turned to the three creatures near the energy wall he had found for himself when he tried to walk through it. The stinging pain had him retreating to the only real wall, and staying there as the mare babbled and grunted at those creatures that stood on the other side of the wall.
What nightmare was this, he wondered. And how in the name of the Maker did he get out of it?
He had no idea, but he genuinely wished it would just end.
The filly, however, had her own issues.
"Will you morons just call the captain, and shut off that damned alarm," Helen Slater demanded as she stood just away from the quarantine shield. "I told you, I'm Dr. Slater. Now get the captain…."
"The captain is here," Ben said gruffly as the hatch opened just then. "Care to explain yourself," he asked briskly as she glanced back at the physician, and saw he was very close to yielding to shock.
She supposed she understood. Aside from Andrea, who favored Andy, the two were accompanied by a pair of security men who were Wolvyrn. The bipedal lupines were a fierce sight to the uninitiated.
"It really is okay, doctor," she smiled at the healer, her tail unwittingly betraying her own anxiety however as she turned back to the captain.
"Captain Sawyer, I'm Helen Slater," she told him, switching back to the common tongue they shared in the Federation. "I had a slight…..mishap while on the planet."
"Slight," the man virtually bellowed as he glared up at her since the transport chamber was raised by necessity to accommodate the energy buffers that helped make teleporting possible. "Dr. Slater, you were on a routine data-scanning mission. Where the hell have you been, and what's happened to you?"
"More importantly, who's your friend," Andy Myers demanded as she kept her hand on her weapon, though it was still holstered at her side.
"Dr. Marcan is the physician who treated me, and likely saved my life. Unfortunately, he also thought I was suffering a genetic mutation, and decided to try correcting my defects," Helen reported.
"You're kidding," Ben blinked as he stood there absorbing her bland explanation before he managed the words.
"Do I look like I'm kidding," she snorted, stamping a small hoof.
Andrea snickered.
Helen swore, and held up her communicator. "Would I have known the security code to open an emergency frequency if I weren't Dr. Slater? And by the way, you can tell Gene I have a veritable cornucopia of cultural data on the Exanters that is going to delight him. Not to mention that their political system is going to drive him crazy. They have a combination of feudal democracy, with caste levels that range from…."
"It's Helen," Andy said, rolling her eyes as she relaxed her aggressive posture. "But what about your friend?"
"He….ah, rushed to my side during transport. I think he was being, ah, protective," she admitted sheepishly, not knowing of his suspicions. "He's like that."
"Contaminants," Ben turned to the transporter chief to query.
"They're both clean, sir," the senior chief reported as he looked up from the control panel. "And I've confirmed Dr. Slater's DNA pattern. It's a bit skewed just now, but there is no doubt. That…is her."
"I told you as much," she snorted again, glaring at the chief who had been trying to get a date with her for months since this mission started. And now she was all but naked in front of him in this thin robe. Of course, she was now covered by a smooth, dark blonde coat that made her look like a Terran Palomino. A bipedal Palomino, but still very much a horse judging from the man's stunned expression. Still, she was naked, because the small robe was covering very little. Some things, she decided as she thought of hospital gowns in general, must be universal.
"Think you can get your friend to put on a translator so we can speak with him," Benjamin asked as Helen's newly enhanced hearing picked up the end of the shield's soft humming. They had dropped the quarantine shield then. A wise precaution, of course, but it annoyed her.
And itched.
"I'll try. He's about one hair from succumbing to real shock, though."
"Try to reassure him. We've got a mess here, doctor, and we can't be just sending him back just now."
"I know. I know," she sighed.
"Get to it. We'll be on the bridge until you calm him down. I'll meet you in the ready-room in….thirty minutes. Try to get him coherent by then," he suggested, glancing over at the wild-eyed creature that was watching his every move.
"Ah, he's not dangerous, is he," Andrea asked quietly now as she realized just how big Marcan actually was. But then, most Exanters were over seven foot when fully grown. Males, anyway.
"He's a doctor. and he's just had a helluva shock himself. Give me time, and he'll be fine. You might want to send Abe and Will off, too. Instincts," she added meaningfully, with a nod at the wolvyrn.
"Gotcha," the tall woman smirked, though Helen didn't think she truly understood. The woman had likely never been afraid of anything in her life. She was too mean.
"Doctor," Helen called to the pale Exanter again as she turned back to him. "It's okay. Honest. We're on my starship…."
"S-Star…..Ship," the physician rasped, staring at the hatch that had opened and closed of its own will when the four newcomers left the chamber. "What is this madness, filly," he asked gruffly, trying to sound demanding, and failing.
"If you are….okay….I'm going to try to explain everything. My captain wishes to speak to you, too."
"He….He can speak our language, too?"
"Actually, I'm not really speaking your language, doctor," she told him as she slowly approached him after pulling out the small, teardrop-shaped device from the pouch she had left in one of the tech's care. "I use something like this. It translates everything you and I say so we can understand one another."
"That…tiny object can do such things," Marcan snorted in disbelief.
"It uses very small machines. Nannites, we call them," she said, using a simple explanation for now. "Just place it flat against one ear, and you will be able to understand all that is said around you."
His hand slowly reached out, and she placed the small metal object in his palm. He stared at it, exhaling heavily twice, and then looked at her.
"We are truly on….on a ship? A space ship?"
"Yes."
"How….? How was this accomplished? We were just in the clinic?"
"Transport through molecular teleportation."
"Impossible!"
He shook his head at her smile, then shook his head again.
"Obviously, it isn't, is it," he sighed, and carefully placed the small metal tear at his right ear.
"Do you understand me," she asked.
"I've always understood you," he replied gruffly.
"But now I am speaking my own language," she explained patiently.
He blinked, his ears twitching. "Amazing. I hear….."
"I know. Would you come with me now? I'll show you some of the ship, as much as I can, and then I'll take you to the captain."
"Why…. Why are you here, little one? Do you plan to invade E'osta? Are you…conquerors," he asked anxiously as his ears flattened in dismay.
"No, no, no," she assured him as the transporter chief snickered, and kept working on whatever held his attention when he overheard them. "We are explorers. Representatives of a vast alliance of various star systems that span the galaxy. The known galaxy, that is."
"We…. We didn't think….space flight was possible, even if life was theorized to be possible beyond our own world," Marcan admitted as she reclaimed her data modules from the pouch before she led him from the transport pad.
She smiled when he approached the edge cautiously, but stepped down after he saw she had safely passed beyond the point where the shield had been earlier. "The shield was only for security, and to make sure no biological, or foreign contaminants could enter the ship."
"But….how can you know if…."
"We have technology beyond anything you have yet developed, doctor. Obviously. The captain knew we were safe, and so now we can leave the transport chamber."
They emerged from the hatch, and he gaped at the long corridor that extended in both directions beyond that door.
"How large is this ship?"
"About four-hundred thousand metric tons," she shrugged. "I'm not sure of all the specs, though. I'm more of an anthropologist. Now, I'm going to stop by my quarters first to, ah, dress. Then I'll show you some of it."
"So, you came to study my world," he surmised as she led him down the corridor to a lift that moved smoothly, and without sound. He gasped at the falling sensation, then steadied himself as she smiled at him and stood by his side without showing any alarm.
"Yes. We hoped to learn if you might make a viable addition to our Federation in time."
"Fed-er-ra-tion. I see. And what have you learned?"
"I was still studying your current histories, and government systems when the quake hit."
"Ah, yes. The public records building. Now I know why you were there alone."
"I was hoping to come and go undetected," she admitted sheepishly. "The quake was a surprise."
"They are common enough in our region. But I see now that you are not a mutation. That you were as the Maker intended all along."
"Yes," she smiled at him, hearing the dismay back in his tone as they reached her quarters. A few minutes later, and a few hasty, but necessary alterations to a jumpsuit she now wore with a space for her tail, and she was almost feeling normal once more. She didn't bother with boots, as they were rendered useless with her new hooves.
"I have harmed you," he said now in what sounded like horror. "I cannot imagine what you must feel at being so….violated."
"I am not so vain, small-minded, or egotistical," she chided him. "I know you were only trying to help. I know things could have been much worse, all told, and I know you obviously saved my life, because the last thing I remember was at least half of that ceiling collapsing on top of me."
"You had some serious wounds," he admitted with a faint nod as they entered a room filled with a myriad of alien beings.
"Oh. Oh, my," he murmured as he simply stood and stared.
"I didn't think," she began. "I can take you someplace more private….."
"No, no," he shook his head, staring around him in wonder now. "There are so….so many…. The diversity is...astonishing."
"Doctor?"
"Call me, Marcan, filly," he grinned at her, his interest still present in the twinkle of his brown eyes.
"I am Helen," she told him, trying to be more formal, she added, "Dr. Helen Slater."
"That name is wrong for you. I shall call you Honey," he smiled. "It suits you," he told her as she belatedly realized that her name in his ears likely came out as a grating mass of syllables hard on the ears in his tongue.
"Thank you. And you were saying?"
"All these beings are….aliens?"
"We prefer offworlder to alien. It's less insulting to some."
"Of course. Of course. But….I never once thought such….diversity…..could exist. Or that it would come to us," he exclaimed.
"Well, it is a big galaxy. A very big one. Unfortunately, we now have a problem."
"I take it I am that problem?"
"Bright man."
"What to do with me, I suspect, is the crux of that problem," he murmured as she led him to a table near a huge, glass port. He stopped and gasped, staring out at the sea of stars beyond the thick glass, and the sliver of the planet visible to them beyond a ring of space rubble. "Is that….?"
"Your world," she nodded, gesturing the nearby planet. "I wanted to show it to you."
"It looks….so beautiful from here," he murmured, staring down at sphere the brown and blue world that was his home. "And so fragile."
"It is both. All such worlds are, Marcan," she told him as they sat down near the port. "That's what makes life so precious to our Federation. That is partly why we seek it out, and we try to learn from each encounter."
He looked out the port as a woman walked over to them, and he looked up at her. She was much like Helen had been before her 'healing,' and Marcan studied her carefully as she asked them what they would like without so much as batting a dark eye at their appearance. "D'vorkian ale," Helen/Honey told the woman. "Trust me," she grinned at him.
"She looks like you. Or, as you did."
"Don't start on that again. Although, I was going to query you on that….gen-gineering you mentioned. Can it be reversed," she asked.
"I have no idea," he admitted after a troubled silence. "No one has ever not wanted to be wholly human."
"Touché," she grinned.
"I meant…."
"I understand. I'm only anticipating what my captain is going to ask."
"One of those others was your captain?"
"Benjamin Sawyer. The tall, blonde male you saw."
"And the female was his mate?"
She burst into laughter.
"I'm sorry. No, no, Dee is no one's mate. She's Haatorean. They're a race of hermaphrodites. And they're a very tough people. And independent. The idea of monogamy would offend them."
Marcan blinked. "Truly? How odd."
"Well, there are some races that would be offended by the castes your people still preserve. Especially the slave caste."
"Are you offended, Honey," he asked her quietly.
"I'm….more open minded. I understand that different cultures progress at their own rates. And in their own ways."
"That was not a very definitive reply."
"I'm a student of many cultures. It's as definitive as I get," she smiled at him as the woman returned with their drinks in slender, but stout glass mugs.
"That's all we need for now, Doris," she told the older woman when she asked if they needed anything else.
"You are not what I imagined aliens….er, offworlders would be," he mused as he studied the container filled with dark, frothy liquid.
"I understand. Preconceptions die hard. Even I have a few of my own. And I know better."
"What did you call this," he asked her as he lifted the mug and sniffed at the liquid.
"D'vorkian ale. It comes from a planet about…..oh, nine thousand light years from here. They are even less advanced technologically than you are, but they make very good drinks though," she grinned as she took a healthy sip of her own mug.
He swallowed hard, and gulped down a mouthful. He smacked noisily, then licked his thin lips. Then he grinned. "It is good," he remarked with a wide smile, and then downed the rest of the potent ale.
"I thought you'd like it. It's almost like cazca," she told him.
"You've tried our beer, have you," he did smile now.
"I like to sample everything about the cultures I study," she smiled back.
"Everything," he asked abruptly, his brown eyes darkening as his ears swiveled forward, and she heard his tail brushing against the floor as it moved. She kept forgetting her own new appendage until it would unaccountably move, and just now, it twitched wildly, as if betraying the sudden throbbing of her heart as she felt herself suddenly warming to an alarming degree.
"Uhm, doctor….."
"Marcan," he told her, staring into her blue eyes as his free hand reached for one of hers.
"We….have to go see the captain. Now," she blurted out as she leapt from her seat. "He just gave us time for you to recover from your shock, and….."
"Do you have a bond-mate, or a master," he asked her bluntly as he rose from his seat after draining her glass when she seemed to be about to leave it nearly untouched.
She felt a dizzying heat flood her cheeks as her mind seemed to float off beyond her reach. And all because he had touched her hand. Good God, what if he did anything else? She might be burned alive!
"Let's go," she rasped, leading the way from the lounge as many of the beings around them watched them go with knowing smiles. He smiled, too, knowing well enough why the little mare fled his touch.
"Is something wrong," he asked her as he caught up to her at the door before leaving the strange lounge behind. "You did not answer me. Do you have a bond-mate, or master?"
"I…. No," she replied, knowing he would understand no other response. "I'm….a free woman on my world. I serve my captain, and my ship, by helping them understand the new worlds we find."
"Then you are of the worker caste."
"I….I suppose you could say so," she smiled weakly, then glanced back at him. "Marcan…."
"You're late," Andrea barked the moment they stepped through the hatch into the captain's ready-room.
"Stand down, Lieutenant. Dr. Slater, will you introduce us now," Ben asked as he rose from his seat at the head of the table. Behind the table was another view port, and the semblance of a huge, flattened spherical vessel with a massive cylindrical body that protruded just below it. Atop that cylinder were two struts that supported thinner cylinders that extended out and away from the rest of the structure.
"This is your ship," Marcan asked, going to stand before the model.
"The U.S.S. Sojourner," Marcan was told by the man.
"Dr. Marcan, this is Captain Benjamin Sawyer. Lt. Andrea Meyers is our security chief."
"Andy," she grumbled back.
He glanced back at the pair. "Greetings," he nodded back at them. "I am….quite astonished to be here. Obviously."
"Doctor," Ben nodded back as he gestured to a chair.
He smiled. "I believe I shall stand. Your backless chairs are more comfortable for me, sir. I am afraid I might…. Hurt myself," he ended as Helen yelped, jumping up from where she had tried to sit as she normally would..
She glared over at him, and he chuckled, unable to help himself. "You have to remember a tail is more than an evolutionary holdover, Honey."
"It wasn't before," she glowered at him indignantly now.
"Honey," Andrea blinked, staring at Helen.
"Never mind," she grimaced, rubbing her backside as she decided she would stand, too.
"Yes, well, I take it, Dr. Marcan, that you are intelligent enough to understand the dilemma we are facing here?"
"I have an inkling. I already guessed I was not supposed to have found out about you, or your….remarkable vessel," he said, glancing at the strange model again.
"To say the least," Ben nodded as he rose to his feet again. "Our own rules generally forbid disclosing our presence until you are deemed prepared for such contacts. Not to mention, the fact that you've been brought here, technically, against your will."
"I would consider it more an accident now, I suspect," Marcan told him. "Of course, it is going to be tricky explaining my…our…disappearance. Provided I get back anytime soon."
"To say the least," Ben nodded at him.
Marcan felt a shiver of alarm at his tone, and his imagination went to work at possible fates before him. With such wonders, he knew just how easy it would be for such creatures to make him disappear. Permanently?
Or would they tamper with his mind? Leave him clueless, and witless of what the truth of the greater worlds around him truly was despite his experience. Or were they the sort of creatures to terminate those that interfered with them. But, no, Honey mentioned a reverence for life. Surely, being so civilized, they would not harm him in any way such as he feared.
"So, captain," Marcan asked as he adjusted his lab coat over his surgical scrubs even while fighting the need to stamp a hoof in impatience. "How do we solve this…dilemma."
Ben walked over to the taller male and stared up into his eyes. "With trust, doctor. With trust. We will send you home. Needless to say, Dr. Slater can no longer interact safely, or anonymously with your people, but I think we may have enough to placate our diplomatic corps. It will be up to them, and what we've learned to date, as to when, or if, my superiors decide to send an envoy to your world."
"And….if I tell my people about you before you arrive?"
"That will be up to you. I can only ask for your silence until we can officially contact your people as representatives of a peaceful alliance of worlds they might wish to join," Ben told him.
"Then, there truly is no invasion? No subjugation of my people planned?"
"No, doctor," Ben said quietly as he turned to Andy. "In fact, if we contact your people, and they tell us to leave, we will. You remain independent. Whether you ally with us, or not."
Marcan nodded. "I trust you. But….what of Honey? Can she not return with me?"
Honey shot him a bittersweet smile, but said nothing.
"Uh-oh," Andrea Myers murmured as Ben glanced over at the big male now eyeing his anthropologist. "Nature's bees are buzzing."
"Not this time, doctor," Ben cut her off, nodding to Dr. Marcan. "You must understand. Dr. Slater is needed to collate that data we've gathered, and to present our findings to the Federation Council. It may be that she could be ordered to accompany the diplomatic envoy sent to your world in time, but that will be up to the Diplomatic Corps."
"Of course. As I surmised, even your peoples must have their worker castes, and superiors, I see. Now, how do I get back?"
"That," Andrea said smugly. "Is the easy part."
Marcan didn't like the tall female's smile one bit.
To Be Continued…..
