ship
Ni’Var
recovered only four bodies. A memorial service is being held in San Francisco today. There is no solid evidence as to what caused the disaster. The proximity of a Romulan minefield so close to the
Intrepid
’s position has led Starfleet to declare the ship to be a casualty of the minefield’s automated decommissioning . . .”
“Damned Romulans,” Jo the hostess grumbled. She was Anglo-Korean, and had kept her looks past her fortieth, with an athletic build. “Decommissioning my ass. This treaty is giving them the chance to do what they feel like toour ships, and we’ll bend over and take it. ‘Thank you, sir, may I have another?’ Two-headed bastards. Am I right or am I right, B.R.?”
“Very likely, Jo. Very likely. Well, apart from the two-headed thing. They could have three heads, or none.” B.R. remembered a competition the local newslink had held a year or two back: draw a Romulan. Most of the entries they showed had depicted fanged and clawed monsters with tentacles. A few had depicted the president, or unpopular celebrities.
“Well, yeah. But you know what I mean. Bastards.”
The woman round the corner of the bar didn’t pay any attention, but the other man, who was nursing a drink away from the lunching workers, looked up. He was short and stout, dressed in dark tweeds, with a dour, lined face; in every way the opposite of the tall and thinning-haired B.R. He looked like a history professor from the university, whose campus was a couple of blocks over.
“The Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, Orions, and Denobulans are all humanoid, so why wouldn’t the Romulans be the same?” the professorial man asked.
B.R. blinked. “I suppose there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but there are non-humanoid races out there too, like the Xindi bugs. And they attacked us. Maybe the Romulans fought us because they’re not humanoid.”
The professor looked like he was about say something else, but then he closed his mouth. “Logical, I suppose,” he said at last. “Show’s you’re a thinker. That’s good.”
“A thinker, yes,” Jo agreed, “that’s our B.R. He’s a scientist, you see.”
“At the university?”
“Private enterprise,” B.R. said. “In the field of research and development.”
“Ah.” The professor-dude nodded sagely. “An inventor! And what do you invent?”
B.R. thought for a moment, resisting the urge to be honest and say,
Nothing that works yet.
“I think I’d like to invent something that makes starship travel a little less dangerous. Mine detectors, maybe, or more effective shielding.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jo said, sounding a lot more serious. B.R. recalled that she had a brother on a freighter out there.
The professor-dude nodded in vigorous agreement. “I certainly can’t disagree.” He raised his glass. “A toast to inspiration!”
B.R. raised his glass in return. He looked back up at the screen, which was now showing file images of the recovered dead from their Starfleet personnel files. If they had detected the mines earlier or had stronger protection, they wouldn’t be mere denizens of a file archive now. “Here’s to inspiration.”
PART I
CHALLENGER
1
C aptain’s log, Stardate 60074.2. The
Enterprise
is conducting a survey of the Agni Cluster, a group of G-class stars in Federation space near Ferengi territory. The presence of a group of main sequence yellow stars suggests that there will also be Class-M planets, which may be suitable to create new colonies for some of the populations still affected by the Borg invasion of almost two years ago.
The duty is not likely to prove, shall we say, exciting, but it is a very important one nevertheless. Aside from the numbers of refugees still seeking new homes, it is important that the Federation continues to explore and expand.
Golden light from the nearest star, a hundred and twenty million kilometers to port, gave the
Sovereign
-class
Enterprise
’s sleek surface the healthy