THE WINNER'S CIRCLE

HB22147-a, High Orbit
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.28

- 1250 hours -

"Transporter room reports all boarding parties recovered," Chekov announced, "Casualties listed. Four dead, six injured. One hostage recovered, Doctor Carol Marcus. Away team reports no other captives aboard the Cardassian vessel."

Spock ordered immediately, "Can you confirm that, Lieutenant?"

"Sensor readings are still impaired, but I'm not detecting any other locator signals from the Cardassian ship. We could try another phaser strike to dissipate the jamming field..."

"But we'd run the risk of injuring our own people," Spock finished.

Uhura nodded, "From the brief openings in the jamming field, Sir, no indications of any human life signs on board."

Which meant that the other missing crewmembers had either been misplaced during the boarding action or otherwise fallen victim to the reaver-creature that had suddenly appeared and then disappeared in the starboard compartments. If they were ever on board the Cardassian vessel, Kirk's team would have been in the best position to know. "Any sign of the Romulan vessel?"

"We detected a mass disturbance a moment ago," Chekov said, "Moving out of contact range, heading one four two mark seventeen."

Spock half-turned his chair towards the science console, "Fleeing the system?"

"I don't think so," Uhura said, "The Kor'ah's started her engines... I think they're moving to attack the Klingon ship."

That made perfect sense. The Klingons had come here looking for the Romulans, and their boarding parties had probably massacred the Romulan infiltration team before the Enterprise intervened. The Romulans had come here for a very specific purpose, and now the biggest obstacle to that purpose appeared to be the Klingons.

The turbolift hissed open and Captain Kirk staggered onto the bridge, still wearing his encounter suit, still stained with traces of blood from three different races and scorch marks from at least four different kinds of weapons. He dropped tiredly into his command chair just as Spock moved to leave it. "What's our status?" he asked, shouldering the weight in his voice.

"Francium has been neutralized," Spock said, re-establishing himself at the science console, "And the Kor'ah appears to be engaging the Romulan vessel..." something flashed on one of the overhead screens, and the more detailed information flowed through Spock's monitor, "Now scanning a large mass displacement reading. Indications consistent with small attack craft entering warp speed."

Kirk didn't need to ask, but he already knew what was happening next. "The Klingons?"

"Changing course, raising output in their main drive core."

A magnified image of the Klingon ship appeared on the viewscreen, the hump of its engineering section giving off a churning glow as the ship gathered power within itself. In a matter of seconds, the ship vanished into a stream of light, and seconds after that it disappeared even from the long range tracking sensors.

Kirk sank into the command chair, feeling about a hundred pounds heavier. Then he remembered that he was both alive and in the command chair; he stood up, stretched his neck, then casually tapped his intercom switch and asked, "Engineering, status report."

"Multiple warning lights on the main phaser banks, trying to correct. All drives and primary systems are fully operational."

"I want a full damage report from all departments within the hour, along with a full account of any missing equipment." He closed the intercom and then ordered, "Uhura, hail the Grazine."

"Aye, Sir," Uhura toggled to the Cardassian's standard radio frequency and sent them what could only have been a very expert rendition of a standard hail in the Detapa political language: "Detapa Gol Grazine, zalg Gister Dol Enterprise, utentan raskas. Gadrasu." She waited a few moments for a reply, then looked to Kirk and shook her head.

"Regular intervals," Kirk said, then turned to the opposite workstation where his science officer was just finishing archiving her intercepts of Klingon and Romulan transmissions for intelligence debriefing later. "Spock, what exactly are our orders from Starfleet in relation to this system?"

"Specifically or the political intent?"

"Just the specifics."

Uhura was starting another hail of the Grazine and Kirk watched her out of the corner of her eye in case they finally responded.

"Our orders are to investigate all possible leads as to the origin and nature of the technology that was used to duplicate the planet and attempt to make contact with its creators."

"In your opinion, Commander," Kirk glanced at the data scrolling the science console, "have we made a reasonable effort to comply with those orders?"

Spock glanced back at his science monitor now, which at the moment was streaming with text prints of damage reports and injury lists from a dozen compartments and a dozen duty stations. "I think our efforts have been more than reasonable, Captain."

"Do you believe we would be justified in terminating our current assignment?"

Spock raised a brow. And perhaps in a moment of mental and physical exhaustion he offered an almost human response, "Do you really have to ask?"

Kirk nodded in agreement. For the moment it was really better left unsaid that the three of them, much like the overall crew of the Enterprise, had had just about enough of this assignment. "Uhura, start to-" he paused at the contemplative look that suddenly flashed across her face and waited for her to finish with whatever had suddenly grabbed her attention.

Finally, "Grazine is signaling, Captain. It's on a tertiary signal, probably rigged from one of their shuttlecraft."

Kirk walked over to the communications console and knelt down next to the audio pickup on her monitor. An altogether familiar voice hissed out of the speaker under a cloud of static, "Enterprise. This is Glynn Lynoi in temporary command of the Grazine."

"Glynn, we recovered one of our officers from your vessel. Several others are still unaccounted for. For some reason I am unable to scan the interior of your ship-"

"We are running with a high-energy thoron field in place. Part of our basic security protocols."

Kirk frowned, "If we can't account for the rest of our missing crewmen, it may be necessary to conduct a more thorough search of your ship."

There was a long pause from Lynoi's end, then the transmission suddenly seemed to become more clear. Then Spock announced from his console, "Jamming field disabled, Captain. I am scanning for human lifesigns."

"I can assure you," Lynoi said as the signal returned, "We recovered only a single human among the Romulan boarding party. Two others we beamed aboard turned out to be hostile alien life forms with shape-shifting capabilities. Apparently the Romulans abducted them from one of your laboratories."

Kirk shot a glance at Spock, who simply nodded slowly. The meaning was clearly there: the Reaver specimens had been counted among the missing equipment. "Lynoi, your vessel has been compromised," Kirk went on, "Your warp drive engines are disabled. We are prepared to evacuate your crew and arrange for transport back to Cardassian space."

"Would that be a show of moral superiority in addition to tactical?" Lynoi sighed sadly, "Thank you for the offer, Enterprise, but I think we will manage to survive on our own."

Kirk bristled at the science officer's tone, "You left us little choice, Lynoi. You abducted our officers and tried to shake our pursuit with an evasive maneuver. We have now ended hostilities and we wish to avoid further loss of life."

Lynoi sighed again, "Between the damage to our engineering section and the boarding actions, we have loss over two thirds of our crew. Gul Dulek and most of the senior staff were eaten alive by one of those reaver things, and my chief engineer - the only man who knew enough about our warp engine to repair it - was blown into space when your phaser cannon vented the compartment. All of this because you couldn't be bothered to ask us what our intentions were. Did it not occur to you that we would have been happy to return your officer to your custody as soon as we had shaken the Romulan vessel chasing us?"

"No," Kirk said as blunt as a sledgehammer, "Because if that had been your intention, you would have offered to join forces against the Romulan vessel. You saw an opportunity to betray us and you took it. You miscalculated."

"And we will own the consequences of that mistake. If it's all the same to you, Captain Kirk, I would rather not suffer the humiliation of having to be escorted back to Cardassia like a rambunctious child. Don't concern yourself with us. Go and complete your mission."

The hiss of static crumbled to silence. Uhura glanced at him with a look that told him Lynoi had stopped transmitting and closed the channel.

That suited Kirk just fine. He had moral and regulatory obligations to aid any ship in distress - even if that happened to be an enemy vessel - but he didn't have to help them against their will. "Well, that's it then... Uhura,"

"Sir?"

"Prepare our final report for burst transmission to Starfleet in twelve hours... and use a different cypher this time, the Romulans have probably broken Maroon."

"Aye, Sir. We'll use Indigo this time."

"Right..." Kirk started for the port side turbolift, and paused just short of the door, "Secure from battle stations, all decks begin repairs. I'll be in sickbay."

.

- 1304 hours -

The infirmary section was filled to capacity, thirty beds and thirty dividers pulled into position with thirty different kinds of injuries in various levels of severity. Kirk knew - he could sense somehow - that this was just the tip of the iceberg, that there were dozens of more minor cases being treated at aid stations all over the ship by a cadre of damage control officers moonlighting as paramedics. Obviously, it could have been alot worse; between a boarding action by Romulans and then a close-quarters fight with a Gorn warship, it was remarkable that Enterprise had taken as little damage as it had, to say nothing of the violent alien presence that had torn through a dozen compartments before it simply vanished without a trace.

There were still loose ends to settle, most troubling of which was the fact that most of the missing crewmen were not found aboard the Cardassian ship, and neither for that matter was the reaver specimen. And on top of that, all twenty five of the Doppelgänger survivors were unaccounted for, and Kirk knew of only one person on the entire ship who might know what had happened to any of them.

Doctor McCoy was nowhere to be found, as expected. He managed to intercept Nurse Chapel, though, bouncing back and forth between a pair of loudly-groaning patients who were both wearing Class Four tactical gear and were obviously part of Lieutenant Rand's away team. "Christine, where's Doctor Marcus?"

Chapel answered without making eye contact, "She's with Lieutenant Rand in the ICU."

Decompression sickness, Kirk knew, was fairly easily treatable if you got to it soon enough, which they almost certainly had. But the image of Lieutenant Rand materializing on the transporter pad with a Klingon dagger in her chest danced through his mind like poorly-timed commercial advertisement. "How bad is it?"

Chapel frowned, "Terminal. If you're planning to debrief her, you had better do it now."

Kirk navigated the sea of doctors and patience and medics and equipment until he got to the hermetic doorway into the intensive care unit. Doctor Marcus and a pair of civilians were standing in a corner, whispering to each other with a sense of suppressed urgency, while the center of the room was dominated by Doctor McCoy and a surgical tractor beam that was in the process of extracting something that looked like a half-eaten meatball from the Lieutenant's wide-open chest cavity. Rand herself was sealed away inside of a medical forcefield that maintained a sterile environment around her; a dozen smaller tractors held the chest incision open, and several fist-sized lumps of flesh - organs, maybe? - were floating in a stasis field next to the surfical bed. McCoy himself was just a pair of arms among a half dozen robotic arms that were hard at work inside the Lieutenant's body, and it was only now that Kirk understood what Chapel had meant. Terminal: she was already dead. McCoy's job now was to reduce her death to a temporary setback instead of a permanent inconvenience.

Kirk looked at the vivisected Lieutenant, then at McCoy, reading his expression, and then back at Rand. "What's the prognosis, Bones?"

"That knife had a nasty serrated edge," McCoy said, "Tore her heart into three pieces and ripped one of her lungs in half. I've got a bypass to cortical functions through artificial circulation, but I can't keep her this way forever."

"How long?"

"Five days, give or take. We can regenerate the damaged organs, but it's a question of whether or not her body can handle that kind of trauma without shutting down. I've induced a medical coma, but if she hasn't made any measurable progress in five days, she never will."

Kirk felt his stomach twist in a knot. "Do what you can, Bones. We're getting ready to pack it in..."

"It's about damn time!"

"... but we're still missing some people. If you have a spare moment, ask around, see if anyone knows what happened to Doctor Ayash."

McCoy sighed tiredly. "Jim, I'm a doctor, not a detective."

"It's possible he might be injured or-"

"He's dead, Jim," Doctor Marcus said, emerging from her civilian group in the corner of the room, "Lieutenant Onise ate him."

Who, Kirk remembered, was in the process of transforming into a reaver the day before yesterday. And if reports were accurate, who had been picked up by security after attempt to eat one of the communications officers in the Clownface Cafe. "Somehow, that makes total sense... so what happened to Onise?"

"He transformed into... well... some kind of creature. Like nothing we've ever seen before. It absorbed anything it touched, it took the shape of everything it absorbed... I don't think it was an actual creature, though. I think it was a utility cloud."

Kirk raised a brow, "Doctor Ayash was eaten by a cloud?"

"Industry term, Jim. I mean a swarm of nanorobots acting as a singular entity. They did it right in front of me. They were breaking down materials and rearranging them on the molecular level."

"Rearranging them into what?"

"Anything they wanted. That's how these machines operate, Jim. They just take a mass of something and change it around. Just like humans would take, say, a pile of rocks and turn it into a castle, or a pile of mud and make pots and jars."

"So they take a pile of molecules and turn it into..." Kirk frowned, "Flesh eating monsters?"

"Maybe just an outer facade, I don't know. But Connor got a good look at with his tricorder. Based on his information, what we saw from the thing was only a small part of it. Most of it was airborne."

"Like a virus?"

One of the civilians said, "More like a swarm of bees, Captain, except each insect would be the size of a bacterium or something. As far as I could tell, they were using Lieutenant Onise like a mobile hive. They literally rearranged his molecular structure into a vessel for them, any form they thought they could use. When I first saw him, he was an exact duplicate of Doctor Ayash..."

"Where was this? When did you see him?"

"I was in the communications center, dropping off a letter to my wife. Doctor Ayash walked in, he shouted something to Ensign Ayala. Then Miri spun around and shot him in the head. Damndest thing I ever saw. Phaser on full force, blew the top of his skull clean off. It didn't even stun him, it just pissed him off."

Kirk looked at Marcus in puzzlement, "And where the hell were you?"

"Getting a physical in sickbay. That's when Onise transformed."

"And where was Miri?"

Connor answered, "Last I saw, she was shooting at that... that... whatever it was with a hand phaser. I know it followed her into Iron Town, but by the time I got there the show was over. Lots of bullet holes and phaser burns, but no sign of the creature."

Kirk suddenly had a chilling thought, "You said a minute ago that most of the creature was airborne... how did you detect it?"

"It showed up on the tricorder as a cloud of sub-micron particles. Most of them even had an energy signature, a few microjoules each. And to predict your next question," Connor handed him a tricorder, "There's no sign of it anywhere on the ship. That's what we were just talking about when you came in. There were trace readings of it at low levels ever since the Onlies beamed aboard, but after Miri disappeared, even the background signal is gone."

"Can we back up a minute? You said something about bullet holes in Iron Town..."

"Like I said, I followed the creature down there. There's signs of a firefight, but there's none of the fixings. No shell casings, no guns, just a couple of drained hand phasers and a phaser rifle. No blood, no bodies, nothing."

Kirk sighed. He'd have to have someone pull the security camera footage from Iron Town for the times Connor mentioned, and for clarity he would have to do the same for sickbay to figure out exactly how the Romulans managed to abscond with Doctor Marcus without being eaten alive by whatever had disguised itself as Lieutenant Onise. The only thing he was now convinced of was that there was no recovering the remainder of the missing; wherever they were, they were far beyond his reach.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Doctor Marcus said. She was trying to sound noble and collected, but there was a note of such crippling sadness in her voice Kirk thought she might burst into tears on the spot. "It's all my fault. She was hurt trying to save me."

"You didn't invite a squad of Romulan infiltrators aboard the Enterprise. Don't blame yourself for this." Kirk put his hand on her shoulder and felt her trembling through her jacket. By touch, he could tell she was much skinnier, much more frail that she let anyone believe, "If anything, it's my fault. Traditionally, Romulans don't take prisoners, not even for intelligence purposes. I should have covered that possibility and I didn't, and that mistake put you at risk. And for that, I apologize."

"Jim you risked your entire ship, your own life and the life of your crew, just to save me..."

"That's my job, Carol. I'm responsible for all the lives aboard this ship. Even yours."

Marcus nodded, "Then I thank you, and I forgive you."

"Don't thank me yet. We'll be holding here for twelve hours to make final repairs before we send our report. While that's going on, I'm going to check the security records to try and figure out exactly what the hell happened to the Onlies and my missing crewmen."

Marcus took a small step back, but Kirk's hand-still on her shoulder-had become a tractor beam holding her in place. "What are y-"

"Those Romulans never got anywhere near sickbay. They hit the isolation lab and the aft science labs. If you were in one of those places, it means you weren't in your quarters where you were supposed to be, which means you once again ignored my orders not to interfere with the operation of this ship."

"But..."

"And if I check those tapes," Kirk squeezed her shoulder, "If I find out you had anything to do with those disappearances - anything at all - I swear on my father's grave, I will maroon you on Doppelgänger."

"Yellow alert! Bridge to Captain Kirk! Yellow Alert!" Uhura sounded on the verge of a nervous breakdown even on the intercom.

Kirk turned away from the suddenly-pale Doctor Marcus and snapped open his communicator, "Kirk here!"

"We've picked up a... Vessel... Or... something moving towards us at high warp. It's not responding to our hails."

"The Klingons coming back?"

Spock's voice cut in,"Negative, Captain. Mass reading and power levels are off the scale. Based on its trajectory, it appears to have come from the vicinity of Doppelgänger."

And suddenly Kirk turned just as pale as Doctor Marcus. "I'm on my way."

"I'll come with you," Marcus followed him to the turbolift before he could tell her no. And even if he did, something told him that whatever was happening outside involved the Doctor just as well as himself.

.

- 1309 hours -

"Object has now dropped out of warp," Sulu announced as Kirk came to the bridge, "Sublight velocity, but coming in fast!"

"Exceptionally strong contact," Spock added from the science console, "Radar silhouette reads as unknown."

"Sulu, prepare for warp speed. Get ready to move as soon as-"

Chekov announced under him, "Wisual contact!"

"-I give the command." And Kirk turned his attention towards the viewscreen and the brown and yellow horizon of the hothouse moon beneath them. Somewhere out there, one of the few stars bright enough to be seen over the glare of the sun had suddenly doubled in brightness, and every second they watched it, the star grew brighter and larger. The light began to pulsate as it grew larger, and then the pulsation became a swirling of colors that were beginning to resolve themselves into discernible patterns.

For a moment, Kirk wondered if it was a larger version of those odd spinning torpedoes the Gorn had been firing at them. But it was much too large and too powerful for that, unless of course it was aimed at the planet below.

It was different, though. As Kirk watched it through the viewscreen it grew to a surprising size; the color patterns swirling around its circumference became visibly more elaborate and harder to interpret. It seemed to be a spherical body made up of a thousand moving parts all rotating around each other, concentric circles on top of other circles with lights and lines spliced between. Kirk remembered an animation of the Xindi Superweapon from his high school texts; even that monstrosity seemed mundane compared to this.

And still it was growing. In a few moments it filled most of the screen and even began to eclipse the sun behind it. Kirk kept expecting it to finally come to a stop and meet them face to face, but it never actually did; and as it came still closer, the visible part of the approaching ship actually dipped below the horizon of the hothouse moon.

And still it came closer. It grew in size as it approached until it eclipsed the sun altogether.

When it finally stopped, it filled the entire sky.

The viewscreen showed the churning details of a mechanism of incomprehensible size. Thrusters the size of cities pulsated fitfully, nested warp coils turned on bearings that could have swallowed whole countries. A large black sphere about the size of Okinawa slewed quickly around in space until a fiery red glow appeared in its center, like the disembodied eyeball of a demon, and Kirk realized without needing to be told that this - and countless others like it - was probably the equivalent of a phaser turret.

A terrified hush fell over the bridge as the crew took in what was facing them now. It was perhaps one-half the size of the hothouse planet below them, but such a comparison was almost beside the point.

"Fascinating," Spock said, breaking the silence, "Energy patterns are consistent with the vessel that departed the Doppelgänger system one hundred and sixty years ago."

"What vessel?" Kirk asked, before remembering what Spock meant. Of course. The third moon.

A visceral fear rolled down Kirk's spine as he contemplated this encounter. Just the idea of a moon-sized starship that could tow entire planets into new orbits was, to say the least, intimidating. But the thought that such a vessel had actually taken note of him and was now moving directly toward him was disquieting on too many levels.

"Captain," Uhura's finger came to her ear and a troubled look began to orbit her face, "I think they're hailing us."

Kirk swallowed and numbly returned to his chair. "Sulu...?"

"Ready, Sir," The helmsman said quietly.

"Alright, Lieutenant," Kirk said, "Let's see what we've won."

An image appeared on the viewscreen, and Kirk's jaw dropped. The voice that flowed from the speakers snapped Spock's head around and the visibly started Vulcan turned white as a sheet as he recognized both the voice and the face it belonged to. "Hello, Captain Kirk," said Peter the Rabbit, or at least the tiny alien that looked and sounded very much like him, sitting on a small chair behind a child-sized desk in a child-sized office at a control complex somewhere. He wasn't quite the same as he had been in his human form. He had no ears, no hair, and his teeth were sharpened to carnivorous points. His appearance was the perfect combination of harmless and surreal. In that regard, at least, Peter the Rabbit had not changed at all. "So," he went on, "Here we are. I believe you have many questions for me."

"You were running the entire scenario from right here on the Enterprise?" Kirk asked.

"Not at all. Peter the Rabbit is a facsimile of me. I plant someone like him in all my scenarios. Call it a maker's mark. It helps me to better understand the outcomes."

Kirk nodded and took this in, "And who are you?"

"I'm Chellik," said the distorted child, "I'm the operator of this fesarius."

"Your vessel," Kirk looked through the translucent image at the spectacle outside and decided to commit the grandfather of all understatements, "It's kind of impressive."

"It is not a vessel. It is a fesarius. I regret that word has no equivalent in your language. It is similar to... Well... Fortress? Dreadnought? Citadel? Except it's disposable... Shell, maybe?"

A moving vehicle fashioned from the transformed bulk of an old dead planet. It was fitting, somehow, that such a thing would have its own separate category. "Where is Miri?" Kirk asked, gently but bluntly moving to his next question, "And where are the other children?"

"I've returned them to... Doppelgänger, as you call it. There are a few more scenarios I would like to run while I still have viable test subjects."

Kirk winced, "Viable test subjects..."

"There are about thirteen thousand native life forms still present on Doppelgänger right now. Not nearly as many as the early days, but still workable for some scenarios."

"What do you mean by 'scenarios'?"

Chellik shrugged, "I use the Chameloid to create circumstances on a model of your world, just to see how the population reacts to them. This way, I gain an understanding of your species' group psychology. It is not enough to understand your intentions, Kirk. I also seek to understand your habits, your obsessions, your dreams, your fears, even your instincts. This recent scenario was one of the more interesting ones. Rather than creating specific control conditions, I simply let the parameters float and be altered by interference from your scanning devices. I have learned more about your people from my observations of your crew than in the last three scenarios combined."

"Those other scenarios," Spock spoke up from the science console, "Would have involved what? Wars? Famine? Pandemics?"

"Natural disasters," Chellik added, "Extinction events. Mass insanity. Once I produced a version of your Earth populated entirely by sociopaths."

"To what end?" Spock asked.

Chellik's head tilted slightly tot he side, "The same as you. To learn all there is to learn about new life forms and new civilizations. That's why I've come here to you now, Captain Kirk," he returned his attention to the center seat, "I would like to offer an exchange of information between our two species. It's so very rare that I have an opportunity to study advanced warp-capable cultures, especially one in such an early stage of development. The analysis could be most enlightening."

For some reason, Captain Kirk thought about General Kang and his blunt response when presented with a similar offer. "What kind of information?" he asked.

"I know you're curious about the Chameloid technique. I, on the other hand, am curious about the last two or three centuries of development among your species. You might bring me up to date, and I might give you some basic information on how the Chameloid works."

That offer didn't seem half as tempting as it did a week ago when Kirk could still convince himself that the terraforming technology was a potential boon to Federation galactic power. Now, though, he had only one thought on his mind. "What about your test subjects?"

"As I said, I still have a few thousand left. Enough to devise some new scenarios based on your new information..."

"I wasn't talking about your experiments," Kirk said, holding his temper, "I'm talking about the life forms you destroyed to create them in the first place?"

"Life forms? Oh... the Sheliak? They're not terribly important. In fact, I think your people would find them particularly unpleasant."

"And for that you decided to simply overwrite their entire existence? Just to experiment on human behavior?"

"Hardly their entire existence. The Sheliak do have a few colonies in neighboring star systems and a number of sleeper ships on long-duration voyages to distant worlds. Their species will probably survive. Their culture, not so much."

Kirk took this all in, aware of the growing sense that he was a small and tasty-looking rabbit having a discussion with a very large wolf. "What does the First Federation hope to gain by these experiments?" he asked carefully.

At this, Chellik's smile faded noticeably. It was the first crack in his facade of superiority Kirk had seen so far, and it was an important one. "My research is a... Well, personal project, not on behalf of the First Federation. Technically, this planet was created by the Anu'Anshee for the collection of he minke and humpback species..."

"Who are the-?"

"... but I must admit I have always wanted to simulate humanity. Your entire history seems like one long case study in cosmic irony."

"You could have..." Kirk kept his temper in check for the sake of all of their lives, "There isn't a way you could have simulated humanity without torturing an entire species?"

"They're just Sheliak, Captain. Does it really matter?"

"They're living, thinking people with a right to exist!"

"A right to exist..." Chellik raised a brow, amused by the notion, "To exist is a capability, not a right."

How truly strange, Kirk thought to himself, to hear such familiar words coming from the mouth of such an utterly alien being. Chellik may have looked small and harmless on the viewscreen, but behind those words and the philosophy behind them mirrored one of the bloodiest chapters in human history. If the First Federation hadn't already suffered the consequences of that philosophy, it was now beyond doubt that many others had, and many others soon would.

And then something Chellik had said tickled the back of Kirk's mind. 'A personal project,' he'd called it, for a planet that had been created for a totally different purpose. Probably, his government or whatever authorities he answered to had been satisfied with the results he'd delivered them as per his orders, but how much did they really know about how Chellik had accomplished his assignment?

And how much trouble would he be in if they found out about it? "Why did you create this planet originally?" Kirk asked.

"As I said, a request from a client. The Anu'Anshee needed specimens of two Earth species that have been extinct since the mid twenty first century. I was unable to obtain original members of the species, but with some effort I was able to use the Chameloid to obtain suitable reproductions."

"Who is the Anu'Anshee, and why do they want extinct Earth species?"

"Why the sudden interest in my clients?" Chellik asked, sounding ever-so-slightly annoyed, "That business is long concluded. We are discussing a new business deal in the here and now. Please consider my offer, Captain, I think you would agree that we are very much alike as a species. We have much to learn from one another."

"Do we?" Kirk stood up slowly and folded his arms across his chest, "Our goals are definitely the same. You want to expand your knowledge of the universe. You use tools to do that. You have the Chameloid as one of your tools, you used the Sheliak as raw materials to create another tool. But our methods are very different, Chellik. We have certain cultural beliefs that we hold to very strongly. One of those is the imperative to preserve life - particularly intelligent life - whenever and wherever it is possible to do so."

"I understand, Kirk," Chellik smiled, "I don't agree, but I understand. It is one of the more interesting things I have come to learn through the eyes of my... Tools, as you put it."

Kirk shuddered as the image of Miri - transformed to her original shape on the transporter pad - flashed through his mind. She had been a child, a survivor, a friend, and for the briefest of spans, a member of the Enterprise's crew. Now she was just a set of facts for Chellik to categorize in his fesarius' database.

Fesarius. The alien word was suddenly charged with meaning. A construct of such magnitude that its presence alone could alter the destiny of entire solar systems; a starship so massive it had natural gravity. If God built a starship, it would be a fesarius.

And this one just happened to have a madman at the helm. "We have a long mission ahead of us, Chellik," Kirk said as politely as he could, "We'll be moving on from here, if it's all the same to you."

"If you ever do reconsider, Kirk," the mutated image of Peter the Rabbit smiled his toothiest smile and somehow managed to look like a tiger shark chasing a baitfish, "You know where to find me."

Kirk smiled back, and then hit the control on his arm rest to close the channel. He waited until Chellik's image had completely vanished from the screen, and then all the urgency boiling in his chest spilled out of his mouth in the order, "Sulu, get us the hell out of here!"

"Maximum warp, Sir," Lieutenant Sulu hit a single command on his helm console, then slammed the throttles all the way to the stops. Enterprise' warp engines built up to full power, and then the ship snapped through space like a rubber-band, vanishing into the heavens.