RENDEZVOUS

Doppelgänger-B Orbit
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.26

- 0750 hours -

The Detapa Republic Space Vessel Grazine eased into a slot position off the Enterprise's starboard bow, its fusion drives firing at almost right angles to the ship's present orbit. For some reason the Cardassians had decided to make the final rendezvous with a complicated plane-change maneuver instead of simply aligning their entry point to bring them right to interception point with Enterprise. Kirk suspected it was a way to look over their potential ally from a distance before making the actual rendezvous.

Grazine was larger than Kirk expected it to be, in fact it was slightly larger than some Starfleet vessels, just over four hundred meters long and massing a little over one hundred thousand tons. It was a long, slender craft with a blunt nose that was packed with sensors, antenna farms and ports for weapons Kirk could not immediately identify. Three massive impulse engines dominated the rear of the ship, directly below a large pill-shaped module half-buried in the armored hull that probably contained a solitary warp engine. Everywhere along the hull, the ship was freckled with armored hatches for missile silos and gun turrets and whatever else the Cardassians kept hidden from the universe when they weren't in a fighting mood. Overall, Kirk thought the Grazine looked like a mechanical sperm whale with rockets attached to its fluke. God only knew what the Cardassians thought of the Enterprise.

"The ship's configuration is reminiscent of Shofixi patterns," Spock pointed out, sounding less than impressed, "At least, the external arrangement and shape. The Cardassians probably copied the basic design without fully understanding the philosophy behind it."

That, for sure, was a mouthful. In some ways, Shofixi spacecraft weren't ships as much as they were gigantic heavily shielded missiles launched from one solar system to another; the colonists hibernating aboard them were a biological payload whose only real weapons were their disarmingly cute appearance and ravenous appetite for the flesh of other sentient beings. "Run a tactical analysis," Kirk ordered at once. Not that he didn't trust Bailey's knowledge on the subject, but it was always best to make sure.

Spock ran a detailed scan for a few moments as the Grazine's attitude thrusters turned the bow towards "prograde" orientation, aimed towards the horizon along the present axis of their orbit. Naturally, it wouldn't stay that way; as both ships orbited the moon their un-changing orientation would be constantly changing with respect to the surface, and thirty eight minutes from now both ships would be hurtling through space with their bows pointed straight up away from the surface.

Finally, Spock reported, "Sensors cannot resolve the internal arrangement of their ship, Captain. Some type of energy field is severely degrading our instruments."

That was unexpected. Kirk filed that away for later. "Anything on a surface scan?"

"Grazine is armed with fifty two chemically-fueled missiles, explosive yield unknown but probably nuclear-tipped. Twenty six large caliber electromagnetic projectile weapons, estimated one point three isotons standard yield, ammunition capacity unknown. Multiple gamma ray laser emplacements, probably some type of point defense system. Power system, unknown."

Kirk nodded, relieved. "So far as we can see, nothing our shields couldn't hold off... how about their defenses?"

"In addition to their jamming devices, I am picking up several small canisters capable of deploying chaff constellations and decoy units..." Spock raised a brow, "And two RIM-3 phase cannons in a turret mounting near the bow."

Now that was an interesting surprise, but not quite enough to make the Captain uneasy. The RIM-3 series was the first production-model phaser cannon ever produced, and after a short-lived heyday was deemed obsolete by the end of the Second Romulan War. Since then, it had become a staple of close-range defense for the Earth Cargo Service and various mercenary outfits that couldn't afford more effective weapons, although its cheaper successor - the RIM-4B - was also a common sight on some of the newer Boomers. Either weapon was still decades ahead of anything the Cardassians could have developed on their own, though, which in itself was somewhat worrying. "Have you translated their message, Lieutenant?" Kirk asked, turning to the comms. station.

Uhura nodded, though tentatively and not with total certainty, "They've stated a desire for direct face-to-face meeting aboard the Enterprise and have requested permission to dispatch a... well... either a shuttlepod or a parasite, the translator isn't sure which fits better."

"Grant permission in either case. We'll meet them in the shuttlebay in half an hour."

"Aye, Captain."

"Meanwhile," Kirk stood and gestured at the senior navigator, "Let's prepare to greet our guests, Mister Bailey. You're with me."

.

- 0822 hours -

Kirk had never seen a Cardassian before, but from what he remembered of their profile they were reptilian bipeds, vaguely human-like in structure and stature, most notable for a cold-blooded metabolism, a delightfully rhythmic language that sounded poetic even to the untrained ear, and a peculiar haploid reproductive system that - according to rumors - made them capable of breeding with almost any other carbon-based life form in the galaxy. Novelty of their race aside, there was nothing novel about their uniforms and equipment, which were simple khaki-colored jumpsuits adorned with insignia and thick black boots that reminded Kirk of some old 20th century military garb. The five of them even carried sidearms at the hip, slug-throwers from the look of things; judging by their uniforms Kirk imagined they were the Cardassian equivalent of Colt .45s.

They had objected to the use of transporters partly out of a general phobia of the device (apparently lacking one of their own) but mostly because of the desire to see the Enterprise up close from one of their own shuttles. Watching them climb down the ladder from their vehicle, Kirk found the craft somewhat quaint, if not admirably utilitarian. Actually, it looked a bit like the old NASA lunar and Martian landers with its four spidery landing pads and cylindrical hull studded with heat-shield ballutes. It had even taken Uhura almost ten minutes just to convince them that they didn't need to bring spacesuits with them on the crossing; how these people ever made it into deep space, Kirk could barely comprehend.

"According to our information, Captain," Lieutenant Bailey said softly from behind him, "One of the Cardassian nation-states, the Detapa Republic, obtained basic warp drive technology from a Shofixi dreadnought that landed off their coast fifty years ago. It took ten years and twenty million casualties to suppress the Shofixi invasion, but the fighting helped them form a powerful and very competent military institution. Afterwards, Detapa went on a violent and fortunately brief campaign to establish global hegemony, and they've acted as the de facto world government for the past thirty five years. Their experience with alien cultures is pretty limited, in fact the Federation is the only alien power they have any peaceful contact with."

Kirk asked, "Has there been a lot of un-peaceful contact?"

"Their region of space is pretty crowded. Apart from the Shofixi - who invaded them again ten years ago - they're in close proximity to seven other warp-capable species, including the Breen, the Tzenkethi, the Ferengi and the Talarians. We've heard reports that one of their lunar outposts was attacked by Klingon raiders last year, and a few months ago one of their mining colonies was literally carried off by... something."

"Tough neighborhood," Kirk said as the last of the Cardassians finally disembarked from their craft, "Well it's a small galaxy, let's try to make a good first impression."

As all five stood beneath their craft's boarding ladder, their eyes turned to the surrounding shuttlebay and their faces opened into what must have been a Cardassian expression of awe. At a time like this the shuttlebay was hardly a hotbed of activity, but standing inside the cavernous miniature harbor gave a sense of robust purpose that perhaps the Cardassians weren't used to on anything other than a full-sized space station. "Gentlemen," Kirk greeted them to capture their wandering attention, "Welcome aboard. I'm Captain James T. Kirk from the United Federation of Planets, this is my senior navigator Lieutenant George Bailey." A second or two later, Kirk's communicator chanted a facsimile of his voice in extremely different words and inflections: "Branous. Pardes thraval. Ligra Gul James T. Kirk, Ru'ta Botu Dentalla Likandes. Tes Gister Likandra Glyn George Bailey."

One of the five - apparently the ranking officer - stepped forward, clicked his heels together and threw both arms high into the air. Kirk suppressed a chuckle; it reminded him of a Banzai salute from those old war movies hybridized with some kind of overdone tap-dancing movement. "Branous, Gul!"

"Greetings, Captain!" rendered the translator as a strong, firm voice.

"Ligra Gul Dulek ta Dakan Grazine, ru'ta Detapa Bodrino..."

"I am Gul Dulek of the space vessel Grazine, representing the Detapa Republic..."

"E'tes rutas raskanous, Glyn Lynoi."

"This is my first officer, Glyn Lynoi," he gestured at a small, lightly-built female behind him, "and my flight crew Gerin Jelad, Gerin Horan and Gerin Gamar. We've been sent here under orders from the our space probe service and I have been briefed on the overall situation."

Kirk nodded, and carefully worded his response,"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we're all friends here. No need to be so formal."

Once the translator related Kirk's words in Cardassian, Gul Dulek's entire body seemed to unclench itself from its absurdly rigid posture. He became an organism once again instead of a caricature of archaic military discipline. "This ship of yours," Dulek said, this time in a language subtly different from the one he'd used earlier, "it's unbelievable!"

Kirk smiled brightly. "She's only the second vessel of the Constitution-class, Our newest deep-space explorer."

"My Grazine looks like a lifepod next to this monster." Dulek turned and looked back out to the enormous cavern that was the shuttlebay, "It could almost fit inside of your hangar."

"Well not quite, but..."

"Your one vessel," he gestured around him, "could overpower our entire fleet!"

Kirk got the sense that Dulek, for whatever reason, was laying on the flattery in anticipation of some special treatment later on. Maybe this was the way Cardassians made friends with new races, or maybe the alien Captain wanted to put Kirk in the frame of mind that the Cardassians were no threat to him at all. In either case, Kirk found himself looking at Dulek with even more suspicion than before. "Perhaps we could, but we wouldn't. Starfleet's primary role is peaceful exploration and scientific research. In fact, the Enterprise is designed to be self-sufficient for up to five years without a port call, and we have to be prepared for everything. We have factories, laboratories, workshops, foundries, even conservatory for animal and plant samples from the various worlds we visit."

"Amazing!"

Kirk gestured for Dulek and his men to follow, "If you'd like, Lieutenant Bailey has arranged to give a brief tour of the Enterprise's facilities."

"We would like that very much, Captain. Thank you. My flight crew will remain here, if you don't mind."

He gave the nod to Bailey, who took Gul Dulek and his science officer through the airlock and into the service corridor leading to the nearest turbolift. Bailey had planned that tour extremely carefully, Kirk knew, to give the Cardassians the best possible impression of the Enterprise's capabilities and what exactly it was designed for. This would include a brief overview of the engineering section, its various factory blocks and manufacturing machinery, the bussard collector and the main deflector dish, the fuel lab, the navigational control center, and ultimately up through the EVA complex in the neck of the ship to the living quarters and duty stations in the saucer section on their way - finally - to the officer's lounge where the briefing was scheduled to start in twenty five minutes.

It would give Kirk enough time to settle some other ship's business. Flipping open his communicator, he stepped into a turbolift and quickly queried of the computer, "Locator for Ensign Janice Rand."

The communicator's display screen printed out: Deck Six, Section 307. Upper recreation level on the starboard side, a place the crew had started calling the Clownface Cafe after the holographic bartender of the same name. He couldn't remember why the program was called Clownface, except for some obscure reference to a popular Phaserbrane song. He had never actually been to Clownface Cafe, so he decided he had just enough time to have Rand show him around the place while he broke the good (or was it bad?) news to her.

The turbolift opened four seconds later to a corridor just around the corner from the Cafe. Kirk's untrained ear picked up the sound of a woman's voice singing in untranslated Japanese what - judging by the tempo - was probably a dubstep/space-angst love song. Assuming, of course, that the song was about anything at all; despite the best efforts of programmers, linguicode translators still couldn't properly account for the subtleties of wordplay and rhythm, so a growing number of singers - especially space-angst singers - composed lyrics by throwing random words together from a dozen languages just because they happened to rhyme. For a moment, then, Kirk made the mistake of leaving his translator on automatic mode and was briefly subjected to a fetching soprano voice singing "Fishing certificate, book girl birth remote, chicken wing table wall, letters falling man me do..." then he set the translator back on manual and went back to pretending the music was that of a Japanese love song.

The Cafe didn't quite dominate an entire compartment, it mainly conformed to the section of the pressure hull where the the five massive floor-to-ceiling windows looked out at the starboard nacelle and the desolation of Doppelgänger-B, spinning slowly a thousand kilometers below them. Most everyone was focussed on the source of the music - Lieutenant Hayase, if Kirk remembered the name right - but there was something else in the background that was gathering more and more attention until, once Kirk traced it to its origin, even the singer had to stop and stare as the computerized music dropped out for a moment. It looked like a brawl in progress, which curiously enough seemed to revolve around a single heavyset Nigerian who was in the progress of fighting off no less than six different people with his bare hands.

Janice Rand was just entering the fray now, along with two other security officers who had obviously been called here for exactly this situation. All three tackled the Nigerian as a singular force, slammed him to the ground and held him there. Kirk heard Rand shouting in desperation, "Onise, Calm the hell down before we have to h-" one of the security officers was propelled into the ceiling by some incredible force as, heartbeats later, Janice and the other officer were thrown over a table not far behind him. Lieutenant Onise leapt to his feet and took a powerful lunge at something. Two science officers moved to block his path, and both were immediately swatted out of his path with a single wave of his arm, like a pair of grass stalks in the path of a tractor. Someone in the path of this deranged officer screamed; Kirk recognized her as one of Uhura's communications officers... Ayala, was it?

Acting before thinking, the Captain drew his hand phaser and launched himself into the path of the officer-turned-maniac. He'd just begun to utter a single word of warning before Onise's fist slammed into his chest like a jousting lance. Kirk tumbled backwards over a cafe table and landed on his shoulders, and just as he scrambled back to his feet he heard the electronic pulse of a phaser in stun-mode. A pair of blue-white pulses tore into Onise's back from behind him, phaser energy rippling around his skin and stripping electrons from his central nervous system, first to trigger paralysis, then unconsciousness.

Impossibly, Onise didn't go down. Instead he whirled on the source of the phaser fire - Ensign Rand taking cover behind a cafe table - and bellowed an almost primal growl that barely pronounced the words "Kill on you! Kill on you!"

Kirk picked up his hand phaser, fixed the aiming laser on the base of Onise's spine and fired. The little pocket-knife-sized hand phaser let off a high pitched scream and a long continuous blue beam right into the small of Onise's back, just as Rand joined in with another brighter beam from her service pistol. Onise howled something unintelligible, then stiffened, and collapsed to the deck like a tree falling in a forest.

Things seemed calm now, but surveying the aftermath Kirk had to wonder seriously how all of this started. Nearly a dozen people were sitting, standing or lying around nursing bruises, cuts, scrapes, and - in the case of Ensign Ayala - a painful looking wound on the left bicep. "Are you alright, Ensign?" Kirk asked, helping her to her feet by her uninjured arm.

Ayala started to answer before she really knew who was asking. Once she recognized him, she transitioned between admiration and standoffishness half a dozen times in as many seconds before she finally settled on gratitude. "I'm fine, Sir. Could be worse."

"What happened here?" Kirk looked at the wound, dark blue Orion blood staining the arm of her otherwise red uniform.

"Onise and I haven't been getting along lately," Ayala began, apologetically, "It's a longstanding argument of ours... kind of petty really..."

"What happened?" Kirk asked again.

She shuddered, struggled to keep his composure, "I um... I'm not really sure..."

"What are you sure about?"

"I was just sitting here, having a drink with Ensign Meaney, minding my own business, when all of a sudden Lieutenant Onise comes up and grabs me around the neck and pushes me down on the table. He... I think... I think he tried to rip my pants off."

Kirk's eyes widened. "Just so I'm clear... you two have no prior relationship in this context...?"

"Actually, we pretty much hate each other, Sir. But then I scratched him in the face to try and get him off, and that's when he bit me."

Kirk looked at her wound now in astonishment, "He bit you?"

Ayala nodded.

Not far away, Ensign Rand took this all in and made a snap decision. She flipped open her communicator and keyed it to the medical intercom channel, "Security to sickbay. I need a stretcher and some medics at the Clownface Cafe. Bring a tranquilizer."

"He's been acting weird all week, Captain," Meaney said, "I thought maybe he was just drunk, but he never seems to go back to normal, and he's getting worse."

Rand added to her communicator, "Sickbay, have a toxicology screening and a cerebral exam scheduled for Lieutenant Kembi Onise and forward those results to the security office as soon as they're ready."

Doctor McCoy answered, "I'll run it as soon as he comes in, Rand, but you know confidentiality rules. I can't release the test results to anyone except the chief of security..."

"Bones," Kirk leaned over her communicator, "Ensign Rand has been appointed acting Security Chief until further notice. She has full security clearance as of today."

"Well... okay then. I'll have it for you in two hours, Chief. Sickbay out."

Rand looked at Kirk with surprise and betrayal now, "Acting Security Chief?"

"Not really 'acting,' I'm making it official as of midnight night, authorizing a promotion to the rank of Lieutenant." Kirk started for the corridor to the turbolift and gestured for her to follow. The medical team passed them on the way in, carrying an antigrav stretcher.

"For how long? Doctor McCoy said it'll be months before McCahil's fit for duty." she said, catching up to him as he pressed the controls to summon a turbolift.

"Even then, I doubt he'll be up to the job. Consider this a permanent appointment."

"You can't be serious!"

"Can't I?"

"Jim, c'mon, I am in no way qualified to-"

"You didn't hesitate under fire, Janice," Kirk said as he stepped onto the turbolift, "and you kept your cool when going got rough, which is more than I can say for McCahil. Plus I like the way you handled Onise back there. Very impressive."

Recently-promoted Lieutenant Janice Rand followed him, resisting the competing and paradoxical urges to kiss him and punch him in the nose. "What about Ensign Dallas? Or Lieutenant McKena? Or Lieutenant Badjarule? Or that creepy Russian guy with the eyepatch?"

"You need me to go down the list? McKenna has no hand-to-hand combat training, Badjarule's still on disciplinary for smoking cannabis on duty, and Doctor Loganoff - in addition to being partially blind in his one good eye - is a civilian. And I already asked Dallas, he turned down the position because he wants to transfer back to the sciences division."

"That coward..."

"In a nutshell," Kirk explained succinctly, "McCahil was a last minute replacement for someone a hell of a lot more qualified. Now McCahil's out, and you're the only one left who could fill those shoes. And the next person down the line... hell, there is no one down the line, Janice, so I'm not giving you a choice!" Kirk punched the lift controls in the wall, keying a destination for Deck Three, section zero, near the command briefing room aft of the bridge.

Rand ground her teeth at him, "That is a blatant violation of regulations, Jim!"

"You can file a complaint when we get back to a starbase."

"Five years from now!"

"Yep. Until then, effective immediately, you are now Security Chief Janice Rand. And you may not like it much, but if you don't do this job there's a good chance we could all get killed out here, so just do the best you can until someone higher up the food chain overrules me."

Rand sighed, then straightened up at something like attention, "Yes, Sir, I'll do my best."